Mummy's Favorite
by MurasakiNeko
Summary: In the beginning, Regulus was jealous of Sirius until he figures out a way to make himself the favorite son. However, is being the favorite really all he wanted? Novel length, Regulus's POV.
1. Illusion

_I do not own Harry Potter._

_One thing is beautiful about this fanfiction . . . it is the first multiple-chaptered one I have ever posted that is actually DONE. Hence, I just have to sit back and relax at this point, and post the chapters at intervals so that it's not all one fell swoop and then over. If you're one of those wonderful people who actually return to read chapters, it has chapters in all, so come back for all of them-- please? I'll love you forever._

_One thing that has always bothered me about many depictions of pre-Hogwarts Sirius is the idea that his parents hated him all of his life. What reason would they have for that? He was their firstborn and their heir, and he seemed to possess all of the quintessential Black family traits: good looks, a slight arrogance, and a rather rash temper. I'm guessing it was only his views, gained later in life-- and his realization that the world he was raised in had many flaws- were what did him in. That was just my inspiration . . . also trying to figure out my little brother's motivation for screaming all the time (he's trying to get me kicked out of the family! BWAHAHA! cough nevermind . . . )._

_Oh, by the way, this starts out very nice and PG, but as it goes on, it's going to get much worse . . . as Regulus grows up, you know; there are some things that cannot be avoided, particularly to give him the appalling shock he needs. So, if you only read stories under PG-13 or R, enjoy these first few chapters while you can (ahh, the innocence of Regulus's youth), because I will be changing the rating as the story goes on later.

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I wasn't always Mummy's favorite.

I was always the baby. I toddled along behind everyone else for years. By the time I was old enough to play intelligently with my cousins, Bellatrix was nearly school age. The short days in which all five of us cousins could play together as children, I was the weakling who always toppled over and had to go crying to my mother, the neophyte who wasn't wanted on any team, the scapegoat when the entire clan got in trouble. I was the one sent to ask Mummy for cookies when it was Bellatrix who was hungry- she knew her aunt would oblige the toddler- and it was I who was saddled with the hardest, dirtiest jobs when none of the adults were around to see the others shirking.

Bellatrix was the model first cousin: bossy, perfectionistic, and undisputably the leader. I always saw her as a beacon of maturity and childhood wisdom, and I respected her every commandment and obeyed her every whim. Her wrath- added to the fact she was always a head taller than me until I reached puberty- could make anyone tremble.

Only Sirius ever had the courage-- or stupidity-- to provoke it. She was three years his elder, but it was amazing how far Sirius could push her. He was mischievous and unpredictable, one minute her friend, the next the destruction of whatever she had calculatingly planned. I thought it was masochistic to turn the tables that way, inflaming Bella to the point that she charged on top of him, pummeling him wildly and shrieking at the top of her lungs, but Sirius always emerged from the tussles laughing- only worsening the anger. Of course, there were moments when Bellatrix had the upper hand, causing Sirius to pale and sometimes even attempt to fight her as she would him- though Mummy or Father always managed to intervene in his case. Sirius hated and loved Bellatrix at the same time- they were companions, but constantly at rivalry: the oldest and the heir.

Andromeda, though older than Sirius, stayed out of their way. She was mild and feminine- Bellatrix was just short of a tomboy- and preferred to stay back in order to keep Narcissa and I at hand. She was our connection between the smart, wild, aggressive older cousins. I often resented her condescension- though I took advantage of its results. Yet Sirius had a tender fondness for her; he could play with her in ways he and Bella never had patience for around each other. The two of them talked- talked as adults- as children, something I did not understand at the time and found frightfully boring.

Narcissa and I were left at the bottom, the baby and the porcelain doll. Narcissa was the opposite of Bellatrix: always calm and collected, and so fragile no one would dare play roughly with her for fear of breaking her in two. Bellatrix was the warrior in our games; Narcissa was the goddess. She was never ruffled, even when hurt- her eyes would widen and she would grow even paler in her white cheeks- but tears would never even show. I hated her for hiding emotion so well.

I, I was the eager one. I desperately wanted to be right in with Bellatrix and Sirius, but the two were too busy topping one another or plotting together to take notice. I got whatever role was untaken, always something disposable in case I got hurt or had to take a nap. I hated that most of all, sitting in my room with the covers drawn up and the curtains drawn- though the light leaked in as would through bars of a jail cell- as I could hear the playing continue in the nursery just outside.

At least in the evenings, when the cousins left and I was left alone with Sirius, I was included. Then, however, was time for the entire family. Sirius was the oldest son, the heir, the pride of the family. Mummy always wanted to hear his take on everything. Sometimes, as she nursed one of my frequent scraped knees or nosebleeds, she would watch the games- continuing on without me- and beam at what she saw as the perfect Black. Sirius had the family good looks, with his shining dark hair and deep dark eyes. He carried himself proudly, and laughed like a haughty emperor. He was clever, stubborn, and proud, just as his father and grandfather were before him. Even his rashness, mischievousness, and quick temper were charismatic and praised with the contented sighs of my mother.

She never sighed that way for me. Her sighs were of exasperation and pity. I was too needy and weak. I came to her constantly for attention and affection. In truth, I loved her, and I wanted her to love me back. Most of all, I wanted her to show it. She would roll her eyes at my requests, and sigh that I needed to learn to take care of myself- though she did, of course, always help me. I was her baby, after all . . . but what was the baby to the heir?

I would draw pictures for her, or pick flowers from the yard, or even follow her around the house chatting animatedly, trying to stir up some favor. It only annoyed her; why didn't I go play with the other children? When I did make it into her lap I would cling to her, feeling superior as I watched calmly from my throne as they played on without me. I liked the feeling.

Yet though she humored it, she did not encourage it. She much preferred strong Sirius, who would sooner pull away with a scathing remark than be coddled, even when injured. He didn't like visible or physical affection the way that I did. He needed no embracing. Ironic, considering he was the one Mummy would have preferred to have embraced.

Though Sirius ignored me around our cousins- our first and practically only playmates of youth- he and I had our moments, usually in the latest parts of the evenings, just before bed. Sirius would order Kreacher to clean up the nursery (the elf and his peevish look scared me until I finally grew taller than it), and then he would show me something of interest in his room, the west wing of the nursery, across from mine. When he learned to read he would pull out the volumes of stories- many of which, we were told, were about various ancient Blacks- and tell me tales, though his voice grew more monotone as he grew older. He had learned to read on the same set of stories, over and over, in hopes he would memorize them all. Andromeda had taught herself to read, and on books of her choice, but Sirius and Bellatrix were deluged with the same stories of Orion Black, the warrior hero in the Muggle-Wizard battles of the Middle Ages, Betelgeuse Black, the Ministry diplomat who headed a movement to cease the Muggle Enlightment through a combination of destruction and Imperius Curses in an effort to keep wizards in obvious superiority to the now technological Muggles, even the more recent Polaris Black, who had bribed the last Minister of Magic in an effort to protect the grander, darker families when the Ministry began to do purges of Dark Arts. It was assumed we would respect each of these forefathers, and I did, of course. After all, they had a book written about them.

By the age of five, I could recite the names of my fathers back to the mid-1600s. Bellatrix once made an attempt to trace her matriarchal line, but, of course, it was practically untraceable, since no one cared to keep track of mothers and marriages, so she stuck with the Maison de Toujours Pur.

We were a house of tradition, after all. I respected Sirius as I was required to, almost but not quite at the level I did my ancestors. He was my older brother, and would always have power over me in the household, even when we were both fully grown. That was the way we had been taught, so it seemed only natural.

Yet there was something unnatural about Sirius. His rivalry with Bellatrix never prompted any suspicion from the adults, but he started showing signs of holding something unparallel to the rest of us in his mind.

One day, when I was about five or six, Bellatrix had happened to break something in the parlor. She called me over subtly and asked me to hold it, whatever it was- some crystal sphere with a light that had once shined but now blinked, the glass cracked visibly around one side- and check to see if it was broken. I assured her it was, it was obvious, and she promptly shrieked for her parents.

"Regulus broke something! Mum! Daddy! Come look!"

I turned to her, stunned, feeling my heart begin to thump against my thin chest. She met my look with a devilish grin. It had happened before, and, as usual, I wondered what I had done to deserve to take the blame from her.

Anything that called the parents in from their usual associations outside of our presence- we were expected to be unseen and unheard, except in emergencies- naturally attracted everyone else's attention as well. Andromeda and Sirius, who had been taking turns reading each other some of Andromeda's favorite fairy tales- until they saw Bellatrix's act- slid off of the big silk upholstered chair and tiptoed nervously around us to take a spot out of the way but in good view. Narcissa turned composedly away from her dollhouse and adjusted herself on her knees, placing her hands in her lap to watch like an aloof kitten.

All four entered- my mother and father, and my Aunt Elladora and Uncle Alphard. Uncle Alphard saw the broken glass and puckered his lips in a sympathetic but forgiving "o," but the other three simply stared in shock. I felt myself grow paler; their gazes were never forgiving.

"Look," Bellatrix reiterated. "He broke it." She turned to me, tipping her head to the side and cooing in a terrible mock-baby voice, "Widdle Wegulus bwoke somefing again." Usually she would end such a taunt with a chilling laugh, but in front of the parents she suppressed it. She was good at acting whatever part was best for her to play.

Aunt Elladora took the object out of my hands and began to tap it with her wand, trying to repair it. My mother's eyes looked weary, but she only shook her head. My father, however, straightened up and crossed his arms- always a bad sign. I cringed before him.

"It wasn't Regulus."

No one knew where the voice came from for a moment.

Sirius stepped out of the shadows from within he had been hiding, his face confidently turned up to his father's, his eyes alight with truth. I wouldn't have dared to be so bold; I shrunk down futher as if to make up for his lack of humility.

Bellatrix jerked around to him, her face pale and stricken but not enough to give her away. I could see the threat brewing in her eyes. I would never tell on her, lest I wake in a recent night to find myself face to face with a venomous snake in my bed, or something of the like.

Yet Sirius was not telling on her. He did not even notice her gaze-- or, if he did, it did not concern him. He took another step forward. "I broke it. I . . . I left it there, on the ground, because I hoped nobody would notice, and Regulus must have picked it up."

It was an obvious lie, but Sirius held his confidence.

My parents exchanged concerned glances. Finally, Father cleared his throat and spoke. "Well, if that's a confession, Sirius . . . I'll see you in my office."

Sirius hesitated for a moment, as if wondering if he had made the right choice-- I had never been sent to Father's office under such a circumstance, but Sirius had, and had returned in conditions that made me severely dread the day I would find myself there-- but he took a deep breath, bringing some color back into his cheeks, and walked off proudly.

Bellatrix was beside herself, but she hid it well. I, however, noticed that the glass orb I had been holding had done some damage. I screamed involuntarily at the sight of the glooey red squeezing out of the hair-thin crevace in my palm and flung up my hands to show Mummy. She twitched backwards in shock, and I accredited her reaction to an equivalent fear of the blood. Yet when she caught her breath, she took my wrists and insisted that I had nothing to worry about from such a little cut. She tapped it with her wand and it sealed over, but I still panted with fear.

"Oh, Regulus . . . " she sighed. She scooped me up in her arms and carried me upstairs to the nursery. Father followed, instead of branching off for the office, where Sirius awaited his fate. The lower branch of the family went on with their business downstairs without us. I wondered if we were missed.

Mummy sat down on a little bench, beside me, her arm wrapped around me as I calmed down. Father gave her a covert glance that even I could understand: it was pathetic how traumatized a little blood made me.

"It's obvious he's guilty," Mother said to him. "Otherwise he wouldn't be so distraught." I felt my heart rate jog at that; surely I wasn't going to be punished after that whole ordeal? "Why did you believe Sirius? It's obvious he lied." She wrinkled her nose. "He didn't think he was doing something respectable, did he? It's like the sort of thing Charles Potter or Fred Longbottom or another one of those Gryffindors would have pulled when we were at Hogwarts, shielding each other from the right blame. Never understood it."

"Well, Sirius will soon learn that taking the punishment for others will only get him punishment," Father smirked. "It's a self-forbidding trait."

I listened to the two of them under the pretense of still being too distraught to be paying attention. I rocked a little on the bed, hugging myself as Mummy wiped sweaty locks of hair from my forehead.

"I'm sure you don't mind it a bit, do you, Regulus?" she asked, leaning over to look into my eyes.

I met her eyes and said innocently. "He was right, though. It wasn't me."

Mummy let out a little laugh. "Regulus certainly has more common sense than Sirius."

"He's properly Slytherin," Father barked. "He'll do anything to shield the blame from himself."

I didn't know that it was a compliment, a suggestion of my ambition and personal determination. So I explained, "It was Bella. She broke it, and she made it look like I did it."

This time, both of my parents laughed. "Perhaps not so much sense," Father chuckled.

"Maybe you should look into it?" Mummy suggested. "Bellatrix could be lying, too."

I wondered for a moment how on earth our household was supposed to run properly if everyone were expected to lie all the time.

Father nodded. "First, though, to deal with Sirius." He took his wand out of his inner-chest pocket, twirled it around his finger one, and went out.

That night, Sirius came into the nursery with a faint red tinge to his face, rather like a sunburn. He looked at me expectantly, and I met his eyes.

"Why'd you do that?" was the best I could phrase it.

He shuffled his feet, smiling rather proudly for one who had just been punished unnecessarily. "Well, you didn't do it, so I couldn't let them believe you had. It would be lying."

"But you lied when you said Bella did it."

He opened his mouth but then stopped. The thought had apparently not crossed his mind.

Much as I wanted to point out how stupid he had been-- and perhaps add in what I had heard between Mummy and Father-- the fact that I was standing here perfectly comfortable while he glowed an unhealthy red checked my speech. It wasn't a bad situation, really.

"Thank you," I said.

Father talked to Uncle Alphard, but he did nothing about it. Bellatrix had a way with men, even her own father, that charmed her from fault. It was just her way.

Yet I had found a very valuable tool. I fell into scrapes without meaning to-- and often without having even done anything-- but Sirius was always getting into trouble of his own accord. He played pranks and played roughly, and every violent eruption that flung him towards Bellatrix resulted in some repercussion administered by strict Father. It would not seem so impossible for some of my mishaps to be his. If I pointed to Sirius before Bellatrix could point to me, she would second the motion-- after all, as long as the blame did not fall on her, she had no qualms, and to keep from blowing the cover she had to remain consistent with her stories.

Every time I blamed Sirius, he lost favor and I gained some. It was a child's dream, finding favor through tattling.

Yet my actions were nothing compared to what Sirius brought upon himself.


	2. Subversion

_I do not own Harry Potter._

I was still a child when my cousins started school. I was still at the age of play battles and fairy tales, and suddenly I found myself in an empty house with no one to play them with. One by one, my companions disappeared.

Bella was gone first, and there was a two-year term in which Sirius and Andromeda grew closer, and the games suddenly took a softer edge, the edge the rivalry created lacking. When Andromeda left, Sirius sometimes condescended to play with Narcissa and I, but, by this time, Mummy, always forward-thinking-- started bringing children from other families into the house to play with us. Sirius ignited the typical boyish competitions with Evan Rosier and Rabastan Lestrange-- the younger brother of one of Bellatrix's numerous (and all male) companions. They were worthy replacements to Bellatrix, and I had to satisfy myself playing with the other boys. There was little to be unsatisfied with; after all, I had found some my own age. I was no longer a tagalong.

Yet it was a mark of how Sirius and I were growing apart. My older brother could scarcely fail to notice that my finger leapt to him every time a crime was committed in the house. Of course, it was his own stupidity not to deny what he had not done. He accepted the condemnation like a martyr, and after a while, I even stopped thanking him. It was then that he began to resent me.

The stories at bedtime began to stop, and he seemed less and less interested in what I had to say. The games were done reluctantly, bregrugingly. Mummy still glorified him, and I was still second best. I had only lost in the game I thought I understood.

Luckily, Sirius himself saved me.

Bellatrix had been Sorted into Slytherin the record-breaking time of 3 seconds. She claimed the Sorting Hat had not spoken to her at all, paid her no single compliment or second thought, and shouted, "SLYTHERIN!" Andromeda became a Ravenclaw in a little more time, and, though Ravenclaw was not as well-respected as Slytherin, there had been many decent Blacks in the House. Andromeda's own father was one. It was simply the Slytherins that ran the household and made the more important decisions-- or at least were involved in the family politics.

Sirius was sent off on the Hogwarts Express with every expectation he would follow as every Black heir and be Sorted into Slytherin. Mummy told him to write as soon as he made it to the dormitories to give her the news.

Yet Sirius didn't write. Bellatrix did.

_Dear Uncle, Aunt, and Regulus,_

_Sirius has been Sorted into Gryffindor. It took the Hat just over a minute. I thought you might like to know._

_-Bellatrix Black, 4th Year Slytherin_

Mummy wrote back in a fury, demanding to know more. Bellatrix replied that she hadn't talked to him since the feast, and as far as she could tell, he had gone on with his Gryffindor friends, pretending as if she and Andromeda didn't even exist. The entire house was in uproar for the next few days; I tiptoed around Mummy, ready for her to explode. Even Kreacher, who was so adored by Mummy that she sometimes kissed his snout-like nose, avoided her. Father was suprisingly cool, keeping himself shut up in his office. Mother wrote to Andromeda, the Slytherin Head of House, and even the Headmaster himself. Andromeda replied that Sirius had acted no differently around her, and he seemed happier than she had ever seen him with three companions-- all of whom she could verify were purebloods (an addition intended, no doubt, to screen Sirius from some blame). The Slytherin Head of House claimed that after some observation of Sirius it was obvious to him the boy was a true Gryffindor with only a few Slytherinian habits gathered from his upbringing, no doubt. Headmaster Albus Dumbledore wrote the most calm letter. "The Sorting is based on past, present, and future. Sirius's past life, present choice, and future intentions-- even his Fate-- are compiled in this one Sorting."

It didn't seem to assuage Mummy, though.

She held off until Christmas holiday. Father said he would refuse to let her come storming into the school to cause a scene. Sirius could go on believing his Gryffindor identity was supported at home-- if he was that naive.

Narcissa asked innocently one day at dinner why it was so awful Sirius was a Gryffindor. It was lucky it was she who asked; the looks Father, Mother, and Aunt Elladora gave her would have had me in tears.  
"Some families favor Gryffindor," Aunt Elladora told her delicately. "We happen to favor Slytherin. It's . . . it's politics, dear."

Narcissa tilted her head, prompting her to go on. Narcissa would, after all, be starting in a year and be forced into the very politics of discussion. The thought twisted my stomach; I would be completely alone then.

"You have Black blood," Father said gruffly. "In Slytherin, you won't be exposed to anyone but those with blood of equal rank. Gryffindor lets in any old riffraff. Ravenclaw, too--" he glanced at Uncle Alphard, "-- but at least Ravenclaw's got the standard of intelligence. Slytherin has a certain moral code, Gryffindor has another. We happen to prefer the Slytherin."

"Not just morals," Mummy threw in. "Slytherins . . . Slytherins are more sympathetic to our way of life." She smiled, "Surely you like the way we live? Our fine house, the balls we can throw at Christmas and New Years and Halloween? Our delicious food? Our ability to do what spells we like?" She leaned in closer, "And, you realize, it's due to these Muggle-borns Bellatrix and Andromeda can't do magic over holiday. I could supervise them, but since Muggles can't help their magical children and they have to be equal, we're banned, too."

Narcissa met her with a slow blink, but then nodded.

Father piped up again. "All these new witches and wizards, the type with no proper blood . . . they're also corrupting our line. You like being a Black, surely?" He was met with another nod and went on. "We have a long history of warriors, deullists, and powerful warlocks. You've read about them in that book in the nursery. If we dilute our line with the newer, weaker blood, that power dies out. Slytherin demands that only the best of wizard society stay on, the type with good blood, and power and ambition."

I turned my thoughts inward. I had a sudden vision of a crowd of men in red ransacking 12 Grimmauld Place, saying that we had to share with the Muggle-borns and halfbloods. It made me very mad-- and even madder in that Sirius had agreed to join their ranks.

Uncle Alphard, most likely to keep his temper, went to retrieve Bellatrix, Andromeda, and Sirius from the train station at the start of Christmas holiday. Narcissa and I rushed in to greet them when we heard the door open. They filed in, one at a time, undoing a green-and-silver scarf, a blue-and-copper scarf, and a red-and-gold scarf in turn, followed by matching black coats. Bellatrix's cheeks were flushed a concentrated red with the cold, and her red lips twisted into a grin as she turned in the foyer, coat aside, to her cousin. Andromeda patted her hair distractedly, looking down at her shoes and poking at the lumps of snow that had fallen in the entryway. I sensed she sensed something. Sirius did not meet anyone's eyes as he hung up his coat, and I saw him deliberately slow down when he heard the telltale clicks of Mummy and Father's shoes on the hard wood the entryway. Aunt Elladora followed, lips tight so that they were white.

I had expected Father to raise the issue, and he made the move forward, but Mummy rushed forward. She seized Sirius's scarf off the hook and brandished it in his face.

"Gryffindor?" she shouted. Sirius's eyes, filled with an odd blankness, turned on her face. He stood perfectly still, his face expressionless, as she erupted in a way I had never seen her do before.

"WHERE did you get the genes for GRYFFINDOR? WHAT ever possessed you to join that House? Did you not resist? Did you not tell the Hat you wanted something more appropriate? Do you forget that you are a BLACK, and that Blacks are Sorted into SLYTHERIN?"

Sirius remained still. The rest of us remained in a circle around him, barely breathing but eyes all on him.

Mummy took another step towards her son. I squinted my eyes towards her face, and realized how pale she was. Her lips seemed to be twitching, and her eyes were overbright. She was in pain.

"Do you know what kind of shame this brings the family? I'm not going to be able to look the Lestranges or the Malfoys in the eye. GRYFFINDOR, I ask you. One step above HUFFLEPUFF. As if it's not bad enough we have some deviation," her arm swung out in a violent gesture towards Andromeda, who took a step backwards, her face as shocked as if she had been struck, "but you have to go into the very ANTI-House of our choice. I'm ashamed to--"

"There's nothing shameful about Gryffindor," Sirius said suddenly, his voice cold as ice.

Mummy blinked very rapidly. I had to physically tell myself to breathe.

Sirius took a deep breath, finally upsetting his rigid chest with a tremerous inhalation. "I'm happy there. I have some great friends. They're all--" he rolled his eyes, gaining the haughty confidence that Mummy had always prided in him, "they're all pureblood. Not that it matters," he added bitterly. Mummy's eyes seemed to pop. "I'm seeing things from a different side now. It's brilliant. It's something you never could have showed me, and I'm glad the House put me--"

"DIDN'T YOU TELL THE HOUSE YOU DIDN'T WANT GRYFFINDOR?" Mummy shouted. I thought I heard the stones rattle in the wall. Sirius blinked, stunned. Even his sangfroid was wearing thin.

"No," Sirus said with an odd brightness that very nearly bordered sarcasm. "Must have forgotten that part," he smirked.

Mummy took in a great heaving breath, but Father dashed forward, leading her gently aside with one arm. "Don't speak to your mother that way!" he snapped, though Sirius had been sarcastic all of his life and never been reacted to in such a manner. Sirius seemed to notice his footing was giving way more and more the more he tried to defend himself. "I don't know what they tolerate in that inferior house of yours, but I guarantee it will not be so leniant while you are at home. You will forget you were even Sorted into Gryffindor. As long as you are a Black, you will behave in the fashion you were raised in, not some newfangled Mudblood-loving--" Andromeda gasped "-- wishy-washy permissive style you've picked up in that--"

"Will you please stop insulting my House?" Sirius interrupted edgily.

Father backed off, eyes histrionically wide. "Oh, defensive, are we? House pride, eh? Well, we can take House rivalry on the home front."

"I thought you wanted me to forget I even went to Gryffindor," Sirius retorted coldly.

Father leaned down right next to Sirius's face. "It's kind of hard to forget when you are one."

Sirius finally took the hint and did not speak back, though I could see he had to physically squeeze his lips together. I felt another tug in my stomach. Not only was he a Gryffindor, he was a loyal one.

At dinner, however, though things were quiet as if a sudden dark cloud weight itself over our dining table, things came off with the semblance of appearing better. At least it was temporarily forgotten-- or ignored-- that Sirius was a Gryffindor. 

Andromeda told how she had made the Ravenclaw Quidditch team as Seeker, and her mother and mine gave each other covert glances-- girls were traditionally not allowed on the Slytherin teams. Ravenclaw, no doubt assuming the female weight was of strategic use to the team, allowed girls to play positions like Seeker and occasionally Chaser. Beaters and Keepers. however, needed large mass and were not given to girls.

Still, Andromeda seemed so happy about it that I couldn't help feeling a bit glad for her. I wondered if Father would buy me a racing broom for my next birthday-- which was in August-- and she could teach me some strategy before returning to school. I would be already to try at out second year.

Sirius teased her that there was a boy in his dorm who had smuggled a broom in and went out and practiced at night, that was phenomenal with reflexes and would no doubt be replacing the Gryffindor Seeker the following year. Then, he grinned, Andromeda wouldn't like the sport so much, for she would always lose.

The parents didn't seem too keen on this subject, as it encouraged House rivalry. Gradually, the conversation-- nearly restricted to Sirius and Andromeda-- died out.

"Your half-term grades all came in yesterday," Mummy said coldly, stroking her soup with her spoon.

"Bellatrix, you managed to beat out even Lucius Malfoy in every subject," her mother glowed. "And I know his father's been taking liberties with the Ministry of Magic to give him every practice time outside of school."

"That's not necessarily a good thing," Father pointed out. "He'll think she's a haughty supercilious know-it-all and refuse to marry her."

Bellatrix pulled a grotesque face. "Marry Lucius Malfoy? I couldn't stand to live in the same house as that bossy prat who acts as if he's got a stick up his arse." I knew for a fact that Lucius was one of Bellatrix's closest companions-- but, then again, the two were more rivals than friends. Bellatrix didn't grow attached to people the way others did.

"Language, Bella," her mother scolded. "It won't seem so bad when the time comes, and we haven't decided on Malfoy yet. The Lestrange boys are your age, too, and you could always marry Avery a year down, or Evan Rosier from Sirius's year."

Bellatrix looked down at her food with distaste, but did not respond.

"Andromeda, you have top marks, as usual," Uncle Alphard grinned, sharing compassion with his fellow Ravenclaw daughter who took the same care in his studies as he did.

Mummy looked Sirius in the eye for the first time since the encounter in the foyer. "And you did astoundingly well in Transfiguration. You could do a bit better in History of Magic, but--"

"That class is so ruddy boring," Sirius groaned. "And I was doing fine until Remus missed the notes on Grindelwald, he was off visiting his mother or something--"

"And where were you?" Father asked, smirking.

Sirius bit his lip. "In the back . . . with James."

"And does this Remus usually take notes for you?" Bellatrix snickered. "Useless without him, are you?"

"Cheating is a very efficient path to success," Mummy threw in wisely. "If it keeps his grades up . . . "

"I know," Bellatrix sniffed, affronted, "I do it all the time."

Mummy went back to her food with a renwed grin on her face. Sirius was showing some signs of being a Gryffindor.

Though resentful of him, I couldn't suppress the fact that I was excited Sirius was back in the nursery that night. I spent the past three months alone at bedtime. Sirius, however, seemed less than excited. He ordered Kreacher to lie if Mummy asked if he had brushed his teeth, changed into his pajamas, and washed his face, and climbed straight into bed, still dressed, earlier than I had ever known him to. It used to be a great game for him to try to stay up as long as possible. I had always kept my door open a crack when he did, watching in guilty pleasure as he stayed up overtly, while I too resisted sleep but in a way that could not get me punished.

I came into his room in my pajamas, shocked. "Are you that tired?" I asked.

He stared out at me, his eyes and forehead the only thing visible between the thick quilted green comforter and the luxurious white pillows.

"Aren't you glad to be home?" I added when he didn't speak.

"Not particularly. I like Hogwarts. I like Hogwarts a LOT." He sat up, shifting the quilt around. I wished that I was the one sitting amongst the blankets, not barefoot on the cold wooden floor. Sirius stroked the green silk overlayer. "I wish I could turn it red, but I can't use magic," he sighed.

"You like being a Gryffindor?"

"All my friends are Gryffindors. They're great guys. And--" he met my eyes, and I noticed there was a softness in them, "--you might want to consider it yourself. Regulus, you're not Sorted yet, there's still time for you to change your mind about where you might want to go. You could be in Ravenclaw, like 'Meda-- I mean, you like reading all those books and things. You could even be in Hufflepuff--"

"Hufflepuff!"

"No, seriously," Sirius insisted. "Hufflepuff's not that bad. They're all very nice, and they try hard to please everybody, and . . . and, well, you sort of do that."

My jaw dropped open. I felt myself involuntarily drawing away in offense.

Sirius sighed tenderly. "Regulus, look . . . " he struggled to find the right words. "You don't HAVE to be in Slytherin because Mum wants you to. You can choose your own House. I mean, it's you; it's your choice. I'm only saying that you might want to consider different options."

"So you did you choose your own House?" my voice cracked slightly with hysteria, "and you chose Gryffindor?"

"I let it put me in Gryffindor. The Hat had already decided; it just asked me if it was okay. And I don't regret it. Just . . ." he paused, then patted the white-sheeted mattress beside him, "Come up on the bed, I'll tell you a story."

As I climbed in and pulled the quilt up around me, rubbing my cold feet together to warm them, Sirius pulled the old volume of family stories off the oak bedside table. He opened to the story of Vega Black, Minister of Magic in the days Hogwarts was first founded, who overruled the proposition that Slytherin be made open to non-purebloods after Salazar left the school.

"Get off; your feet are cold as ice," he kicked mine aside under the covers and began. "When you're in a different House, you get different views," he explained, "and sometimes you realize the old ones were wrong. I was raised Slytherin, but now I'm seeing that Gryffindor has some good points, too. Vega says here," he pointed to the text, "that halfbloods and Muggle-borns were naturally not as powerful as purebloods, and there should be a safe haven for those that wanted to preserve their bloodbirthed power. Now, I know for a fact that's not true; the top girl in our year, Lily Evans, is Muggle-born."

I remembered what Father had said about purebloods being more powerful. Surely Father wasn't wrong!

"That's wrong," I said shortly.

Sirius raised his eyebrows and looked at me. "That's just what you've been told. You don't KNOW that yet, do you?"

"I do know it. I know it's true. It IS true."

Sirius almost laughed, shaking his head. "Maybe you're right. You're hopelessly Slytherin, you know that? Close-minded as a rock."

"I'll tell Mummy if you try to subvert me!" I cried. Father was always talking about how Dumbledore was "subverting" the school into a Muggle-born-loving haven.

Sirius glowered and I felt another kick within the bed. "Fine. Go tell Mummy. You always do. You're just a snivelling little tattletale. Don't think I haven't noticed how you always blame everything on me. You are just a underhanded little Slytherin."

I felt myself shaking. Sirius was so wrong about everything, except for the fact that I was, of course, a Slytherin. I puffed myself up as best I could and prepared to shriek for Mummy.

However, Sirius was fast. He shoved me down, pinning me to the bed, pressing in the soft mattress so that I was surrounded on all sides by white linen. He seized a huge down pillow and raised it.

"You know, another thing I've learned is that Slytherins aren't the favorites," he said. "Mummy's always told you that, hasn't she? Well, she's wrong. The other Houses see them as arrogant, close-minded, dirtbags. And some of those Slytherins aren't treated very nicely."

I squirmed under his grasp. "You can't hurt me, I'm your brother!"

"You don't do the same for me!"

The pillow came down, right over my face. I could barely breath through all the down. I screamed into the pillow, my noise swallowed by the whiteness of the fluff. I kicked and flailed blindly, finally hitting a good kick that toppled Sirius with an "oof!" right off the bed. However, as he fell, he seized my arm and I fell right off with him, sandwiching the pillow between us as I landed on top. However, he soon manuevered out from under me and flipped me unto my back on the cold, hard floor, the pillow in hand again.

"There's one particular greaseball-- you'll meet him if you go into Slytherin-- that thinks he's the most superior thing in the world, just because he's got pure blood, even though he never bathes and looks down on anyone who isn't in his House, and you wouldn't believe the things I do to him!" The pillow flew upwards once more, but this time I was ready. I screamed at the top of my lungs, the bloodcurdling cry echoing off the walls and knocking a bit of plaster from the old ceiling. The pillow pressed over my face again, stifling my cry, but I kept screaming, hoping desperately that Mummy would come in and see the fuss.

I had planned well. We were magically separated, flung apart to opposite sides of the room. My lower back hit the wooden bedboard, but my upper back and head were pressed to soft matress. Sirius, however, slid across the wooden floor and slammed back-first into the solid wall, knocking his head on the windowsill. He held it, teeth gritted, for a moment, but looked up at attention when Mummy spoke.

"Your father is in his office," she said, cold, calm, and slow, "and he expects to hear no disturbance, particularly after his sons should be in bed. I don't care if it is your first night back, Sirius; you have had your time to be noticed and now it's--" she wrinkled her nose as she appraised him, "Why aren't you in your pajamas?"

My finger flew reflexively to my brother. "He tried to smother me with a pillow! He tried to tell me I should be a Hufflepuff!"

Mummy looked back to Sirius, eyes narrowed. "Then I suppose a disturbance to your father cannot be avoided. Go down to see him; you're dressed anyway."

Sirius went out, fuming visibly. I stood up slowly, looking carefully to Mummy.

"You don't have to listen to Sirius. Don't take what he says seriously," she said kindly. "He's been subverted."


	3. Education

_I do not own Harry Potter._

Narcissa was Sorted uneventfully into Slytherin the following year. My turn came with much impatience. I was nervous the whole train ride, barely attentive as a skinny, freckle-faced boy sat down across from me within the compartment, told me his name was Barty, and began chatting about Chocolate Frogs and Quidditch.

When I approached the stool, the first of my year to be Sorted, I picked out Bellatrix at the Slytherin table, smiling knowingly at me from within her crowd of companions including both Lestrange brothers, Lucius Malfoy, Evan Rosier, and a few I knew by sight and surname only, like the Avery boy, the Wilkes boy, and a pale, greasy-haired boy that immediately drove to mind the night Sirius had tried to smother me. Narcissa was at the other end of the table, chatting with a clique that was entirely girls, the sisters and future wives of Bella's cohort. I did not bother to look for Sirius or Andromeda, but I knew from the aura of the room that was entering a world already inhabited by everyone I knew from home, plus hundreds more.

I took my seat, and the Hat was slid over my eyes.

"Ahh, the youngest Black. I knew I would be seeing you soon."

The voice was soothing but oddly rough.

"Well, aren't you the most interesting combination of your cousins? They thought your brother was unusual . . . I see much Hufflepuff in you, but very deeply suppressed. You want to be approved of, and you want love, and you're willing to do anything to achieve it. That, however, is where you become Slytherin. You have already shown underhanded ways and dishonest tactics to fulfill your ambition. You have, Regulus, turned yourself into a Slytherin, but you didn't start out that way."

Turning myself into Slytherin does still make me a Slytherin, doesn't it? I thought wildly. My heart was thumping with the suggestion that I might be a Hufflepuff.

"Your parents have raised you into what they want. You are, blank slate, a Hufflepuff with extended obedience. It's only the fact you've landed in a Slytherinian family that has made you a Slytherin. Yet . . . and I know how non-Slytherin Housemen are treated in your family, and it would not be good for you . . . if it is your choice to be a Slytherin, so shall you be. SLYTHERIN!!!"

The last word was screamed to the entire hall. I felt the blood rush back into my extremities. The hat was removed from my head and I went straight to the Slytherin table. Bellatrix shoved Evan aside to make room for me, and I slid in next to her, beaming as Lucius Malfoy handed me a goblet of pumpkin juice. I was filled with gratitude for Bella; why else would a crowd of upperclassmen pamper an entering first year?

The next child to be Sorted was Barty, or, named on the list, Bartemius Crouch, Jr. Bella scoffed at the sight of him with his straw-colored hair, uneven teeth, and numerous freckles. However, he was made a Slytherin, and he promptly came to sit next to me. I obliged, as there was room enough for two skinny boys where Evan had once sat. Bella did not outwardly show it, but I knew she was wary; Crouch, she had told me once before, was a bloodtraitor family, the type like the Weasleys, Bones, or Macmillans, or Sirius's friends the Potters, Lupins, and Pettigrews-- the kind often Sorted into the other Houses, with no real true pro-pureblood feeling. Still, if Barty was made a Slytherin, there had to be at least some feeling in him.

After dinner, I found myself in a dark dungeon common room decorated with green hangings and dark wooden furniture. Barty and I went into our dorms, which contained five four-poster beds, all with green velvet curtains and green bedclothes. They were a little starker than I was used to, but Barty seemed absolutely thrilled. I pitied him for a moment, the true Slytherin son of an inferior family.

"Was that your cousin?" he asked me, undoing his hangings so that he could get into bed.

"Who?"

"The dark-haired one, the girl . . . the one next to you."

"Oh, yes. That's Bella. Er . . . " I recalled Bella's rule: only those she deemed worthy could call her by her nickname. "BellaTRIX."

He grinned. "She's . . . marvelous."

I blinked. Bellatrix hadn't done anything to make him attracted to her. Of course, he might have been watching the way she leaned forward when she poured pumpkin juice, so that her shirt, unbuttoned further down than necessary with a loosened tie, revealed to the boys across from her-- or the way she always made sure to press very gently on the boys nearest her, so lightly they could barely detect it. Bellatrix had learned something that she had never needed to display at home: sexuality.

She was, after all, 16. I realized from my time in the common room that she was probably the most coveted girl in Slytherin. All of the Slytherin girls flocked together, away from the boys-- Narcissa included-- but Bellatrix associated solely with the opposite sex. She was cold, cruel, unforgiving, and clever as a fox. She was above many of the boys in everything, from wit to intelligence. Earlier that summer, everyone had glowed over her OWL scores, which contained an O in Transfiguration, Charms, and Potions-- the core classes. She had scored nothing lower than an E, and was slotted for Head Girl next year. Still, though she was intimidating, at the same time she was irresistable.

At first I was vaguely jealous that I was not treated as the other boys were. She flirted but in such a fashion that her advances could not be acted on. She was an untouchable. I, however, as her cousin, was victim to no such defenses. After spending four years shunning Sirius, her former confidante, she seemed more than willing to have me. I was finally welcome.

Of course, my first year knowledge was limited. Bellatrix's friends resented her-- but would never tell-- when she insisted I accompany her places. I did not refuse, of course, for I enjoyed my status with the upperclassmen. Barty used me as a link to Bellatrix, and I had not the heart to turn him down. So it was all the older Slytherins, and Barty and I.

There were politics brewing in the Slytherin common room. Father had warned me of such, but I found I enjoyed it. Here was a place where my knowledge of the old stories came in handy. I provided my advice, and my strong and deep-seated opinions. There was a movement in the works, a reaction to liberal society headed by, ironically, Hogwarts's very own Albus Dumbledore. The Minister was only his puppet, and everyone knew it.

We knew through our families the importance of our pure blood. The Averies knew how important the Avery line was; the Wilkes knew the value of Wilkes blood. Even Severus Snape, whose father had abandoned his mother at a young age-- an unspeakable shame-- had ties to a grand bloodline of the past. In fact, he blamed his family's fall from grace on the new Muggle-born-dominated society.

I was very good at finding statistics to corroborate our opinions. After all, having formed them previously I paid attention only to those that backed my side up. I wrote essays and sometimes submitted them to the Daily Prophet, though they rarely showed up, the paper being dominated by Dumbledore's puppet ministry.

However, it was not solely within the common room that opinions were being formed. Our fathers were planning a long-awaited reaction to what might rise to destroy our way of life if we did not stop it.

Unfortunately, the Slytherin common room was not the only seat of political ferment. In all the other houses, there was reaction and support of Albus Dumbledore and the Ministry's pro-diversity movements, supported on the outside by the parents.

"Hierarchy is only natural," Bellatrix had told me once. "We are all on different levels depending on birth and blood. You learn who to obey and who to hold power over in that way. If everyone were equal . . . well, then, it would be just chaos. The Muggle-borns aren't used to wizard society; they should not be in power and should wait out until they are more used to the ways of our world."

"Those with histories should be more in charge," I agreed. "Those like us."

Gryffindor, of course, was the seat of the opposition. It was the summer between first and second year in which I learned just how senseless Gryffindor had made Sirius.

At dinner, Father was known to make comments on his daily readings of the Daily Prophet. Whatever he concluded from this and stated before us was to be taken as an absolute truth. I found he shared my same opinions on pureblood superiority, though he figured the Ministry was bungling and would never fix itself properly to his standards. My idealism of youth, however, often gave me more optimism in the idea of truly creating our envisioned perfect society.

In July, Father was particularly incensed by a proposal that the Dark Arts be banned not only from Hogwarts School, as it had since the late '50s (replaced by the Defense course), but banned from all of Wizarding England as well.

"That is absolute rubbish," Father had thundered after calming retelling it. "They have no business to purge my books and potions ingredients, and fine me for having what's been in my family for years. Merlin, there's things in my house they classify as dark that I don't even know about! They'd see it; I wouldn't!"

"Well, if you asked them to do a search right away, before the law goes into effect, they'd probably be happy to oblige," Andromeda said quietly. "It would gain you favor with the Ministry . . . you know, go along."

Father frowned at her and she turned her attention to her mashed potatoes. "I'll not have these men in purple robes telling me how I ought to be running my house, especially since half the men in power are Muggle-borns with no proper sense of the way wizard society is running under their noses. What do they see? Diverse, permissive Hogwarts, and they figure all of the wizarding world is like that. They're dead wrong."

"They're only putting this law into effect to try to stifle violence," said Sirius in a rather irritated voice. "What use are the Dark Arts, anyway? They only have negative results; that's the whole point of the exercise."

Father blinked, affronted. "There are plenty of uses for the Dark Arts! They classify all sorts of various useful subjects as Dark . . . traditionally, there has been a light and a dark method of doing everything, from potions to healing to transfiguration. And, traditionally, our family has always chosen the dark. It is a tradition. I don't want it stamped out because a few neophytes in the Ministry think all the Dark Arts are are Necromancy, grotesque transfigurations, and the Unforgivable Curses."

Sirius shook his head. "But it's not as if you're going to be incapacitated by these laws. You can do the light way, just relearn it . . . I mean, that's the type of way they taught you in school." He looked up at Father, "You're just being stubborn. This isn't really that life-altering."

Father stared at Sirius in silence for a moment. Sirius stared back, but then, suddenly, unpredictably, he snapped his head back down and turned back to his meal.

"Well, I can tell you one particular use for Necromency," Father snapped at his lowered head. "You'll need it to raise me up after I die, since apparently I can't leave my house to my eldest son, who hasn't got any sense of the traditions he's to be preserving in this family!"

Sirius snapped his head up, eyes rather cold. Father raised his eyebrows. "You're going into 4th year. It's high time you started learning what's to be expected of you when you become head of this household. I won't have our line destroyed because of your foolish whims."

"Make Regulus do it, then. Or Bellatrix. No doubt she'd be overjoyed." His eyes flitted to his cousin, who smiled deviously at him. Sirius only raised his eyebrows. He sighed and flipped his head back, shaking out of his eyes some of the dark hair he had allowed to grow quite shaggy.

"Regulus and Bellatrix are not, by birth, entitled to that position," Father pointed out delicately. I knew, however, he was wishing deep down one of us were. "Perhaps I should start paying more attention to your obvious ignorance-- and remedies for it."

After dinner, Father disappeared with Sirius, though whether to punish him or tutor him was hard to tell.

I couldn't resist dropping a hint to him that night, however. As Sirius came out of the bathroom, I tossed the book of ancestral stories to him, made a mock bow, and said cheekily, "How will you be remembered? The great Sirius Black, the only Gryffindor the Black family has ever seen, singlehandedly responsible for bringing the magnificent Black family, the House of Toujours Pur, one of the longest and purest bloodlines in England, to the degenerate ruin of a bloodtraitor line!"

Sirius flung the book aside, his lip curled. "Shut up, Regulus," he commanded, brushing past me. "Just shut up about what you don't understand."

"Oh I understand. I understand perfectly. Everyone else seems to be in agreement except you."

"Who? Everyone in this bloody house? This house is an asylum for looneys! What Father thinks has no bearing on the outside world!"

"You're going to be the ruin of us! You're the bloody heir and you haven't got a single proper idea about how this house is supposed to be run! It's just like Father said!"

"This house could do with some serious change," he said, running his hands through his hair. He was definitely going through the same changes Bellatrix had; I had seen girls flocking him in the halls, captivated by the mischeivous smile and carefree posture he seemed to have perfected solely for that purpose.

At the moment, his casualness infuriated me. I felt completely helpless, standing by as Sirius destroyed our line-- and we were bound to let him; he was born the heir.

"I can't let you ruin us," I said firmly. "I'm not going to let you . . . I don't know how, but I'm going to make sure you don't destroy the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black."

Sirius's half-smile mocked me.

"You know what Father just told me?" he spoke with obvious ulterior motive. "He said that I have a big responsibility, but also . . . great power. The power over you, in fact. I can order you around as easily as you could Kreacher."

I froze, staring at him.

What he was up to was obvious. He smirked. "You see what tradition can lead to? I have the power over your life and death, what you can and cannot do . . . Can you imagine what it would be like if the entire Ministry were like that? Don't you like that you can elect your officials, decide if they're looneys or not . . . not have to trust that whoever's born into it isn't absolutely insane?" He was leaning in to me, grinning psychotically-- which made him look horribly like Bellatrix.

I shoved him away. "But the children that are born leaders of our family are forced to take into account the best interest of the family, not their own personal whims," I snapped, forcing my angry eyes into his dark, passive ones. "You are a corrupt, selfish leader, trying to erase centuries of tradition!" I shoved him once again.

Sirius grabbed my wrists with his strong hands. "You're awfully worked up about this, Regulus. Does blood REALLY mean that much to you? Are you really that brainwashed?"

"I'm not brainwashed!"  
"You're only believing all this rubbish because it's what our parents say."

"YOU stop trying to brainwash me!" I pulled one of my arms from his grasp. "I can't believe YOU have to be in charge, you, you abomination! You shame, degeneration, sacrilege!" I shouted.

Sirius didn't deny any of it; he simply stood staring at me in a sort of amused shock.

I wanted a reaction; I dove for him. "Corruption! Subversion! Rogue! Renegade! Ruin of our great tradition and family line!" My pummeling got only a physical defense reaction from Sirius; he pushed me back. I was no resistance against him, so I only screamed louder. "MUDBLOOD-LOVER! BLOOD TRAITOR!"

Suddenly I found myself forced backwards, slammed against the wall. I opened my eyes, which blurred from the wound to my head, and saw Mummy and Father standing with their wands raised. Sirius was flattened against the opposite wall.

Father was looking furiously between us. "Regulus, go to my office."

I looked at Sirius. He looked as shocked as I. Father must have meant Sirius; he had simply messed up our names.

Yet Father looked clearly at me. "Regulus," he repeated, a little more slowly, "Now."

I felt the blood rush away from my upper regions in a giant deluge. My heart stopped for a moment and then sped up, making up for lost beats.

Mummy turned to him, her face slightly stricken. "He was merely defending the family name," she argued for me. I stood trembling behind her, hoping her opinion carried weight. Yet Father looked over her shoulder and met my eyes with a cold fury that sent me on my way immediately.

Sirius smirked as I walked past him.

I went into the office, shaking. Father did not come in for a few minutes, so I looked around at the stone walls and vast books. There were a few odd shapes floating in jars on various shelves, rather like the Potions office-- though one looked suspiciously like a severed hand.

The door did not open-- instead, Father appeared just behind his desk with a snapping nose that caught my attention. He slammed his hands down on it and glared right through me.

"You insulted your brother!" he cried. "What do you mean by that? Blood traitor? Abomination? Sirius is the future patriarch of this family, and no such names should disgrace him!" His eyes narrowed, "And from his own dependant, too. You forget yourself, Regulus. He has rank over you in this household. You owe him your respect, just as you owe it to me. Surely you would never call me such names?"

I could feel myself bending towards him in a forced bow-- I looked to the desk and saw that Father's wand was raised, he was forcing me.

"You don't say the things that Sirius does!" I pleaded. "He was saying he didn't care if he destroyed the family!" I hoped that Father appreciated my defense of the name. I had done it all for the family; surely I deserved no blame?

The charm on my back was released slightly, but I remained in my submissive position. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes and I didn't want Father to see them.

"I am taking care of that, Regulus. Sirius has much to learn, and I plan to teach him. In your position, what you say to Sirius has little bearing. He knows this. I suggest you do not shame yourself by trying to command someone above you. Also," he took in a deep breath, and I felt the charm on my back relinquish its hold, "in order for Sirius to truly understand his position, he must be treated as he will be when the time comes. You will submit to him, do you hear me? I will not have the traditions in this family destroyed!"

"It's his fault the traditions are being destroyed. If he respected them, I wouldn't have to step out like this," I muttered.

The charm broke, but another curse flung me backwards onto my rear. Suddenly, I felt a wash of pain rush over me-- it was not strong, but it stung badly all along my skin. I whimpered, but I heard as Father slammed his hands on the table, snarling, "You leave this to me, Regulus! I want unswavering obedience from you to Sirius-- and . . . and if you disobey him, you disobey this order, thereby disobeying me! I WILL NOT HAVE EITHER OF MY SONS BREAKING THE TRADITIONS OF THIS FAMILY!!!"

The curse broke. I burst into tears; I couldn't help it. A mixture of diluted snot and tears running down my face, I nodded fervently in agreement.

Father sighed in impatient exasperation. "Learn some bloody control, Regulus. Your mother always coddled you with this crying business, and it's positively pathetic. It's weakness."

He got up and left me crying on the floor, trying desperately at his command to wipe away the tears, my skin still seered with the lingering pain of the hex.

Sirius was going to ruin everything, and I was forced to stand and watch it fall around me, helpless, bound by the very traditions he broke. Sirius had won again. He was still the favorite.


	4. Indoctrination

_I do not own Harry Potter._

_Hey, anybody wanna review? Please? Anyone read this? I'm so sad nobody's said anything . . . _

_Yeah, yeah, I know. It's so much more fun to spite me.

* * *

_

After Father's demand that I still pay respect to the boy who was obviously trying to ruin the family, a small rift erupted between Mummy and Father. Mummy protected me, saying that I knew what was to be the family's undoing and should not be punished for attempting to fix it. Father, however, stubbornly clung to the traditions, however impractical. I settled happily in Mummy's support, though I knew I agreed with Father. Of the traditions were destroyed in an effort to preserve them-- there was nothing to preserve.

Sirius did not seem terribly flattered by Father's new attentions for him. They meant only more rigorous rules, and more visits to his office. He was supposed to be learning the practices and prejudices of the Black family, but he was a very unwilling pupil. Father harped on him about his posture, his attitude, his manner, his dress, and even his hair, but never gave up on that his son would one day take his place as the leader of the family-- with all the trimmings. Sirius, however, couldn't care less.

Sometimes, it seemed, Sirius tried too hard to be difficult. When Father gave his rants, Sirius would retort with Gryffindorian wisdom, often with an air that it was obvious. Father at first explained his side, hoping Sirius would take it in, but later he resorted to arguing and finally point-blank refusal to listen. It got to the point that when Sirius opened his mouth to provide rebuttal, Father would simply Evanesco his dinner and order him to his room. Straight discipline was the only thing guaranteed to stop the arguments, Father reasoned. It did stop the arguing, but instead of created a docile, accepting son, it only turned Sirius cold and brooding. He would sit at the table, frowning, listening to the conversation with a horrible frown on his face, speaking to no one, not even Andromeda. Mummy would carp that he sit up straight and look pleasant, but there was little else to demand. He obeyed the letter of the law.

While the battle raged on within our house, the real battle began outside. Bellatrix first told me about Lord Voldemort the Christmas of my second year. She was Head Girl, and finally of age as early that December. Her mother had allowed her to attend a New Years Ball with my parents and hers, held at the Malfoy residence. Lucius, the Head Boy (for the first time since Dumbledore had become Headmaster both were Slytherin), and Rodolphus would be there, as they could pose as adults as well. It was a rite of passage, this ball-- more important, even, than a coming out.

She told me about the evening in a blur when she arrived home in the early hours of the morning. the I had stayed up for the new year with the rest of my cousins, alone in the nursery with a few snacks. Sirius had gone off to owl his friends and wish them Happy New Year, and Andromeda was chatting about a book she read to Narcissa-- who seemed surprisingly interested. Bellatrix came in, her hair still immaculate up on her head, her deep purple dress so mature with the childish nursery that I still felt so much a part of.

"I met him, Regulus," she told me, taking me into my room and shutting the door. "I know you're the only one here who would really appreciate this. Cissa's heart is in the right place but she hasn't any idea what I'm talking about, and there's no use in even talking to Andromeda and Sirius.

"It was meant to be a ball . . . you know, dancing, light conversation, drinks . . . but he managed to turn it into a veritable political convention. He's a great speaker, Regulus, and so debonair . . . he was in this suave black cloak, and the way he caught your attention . . . he talked with me, and told me I had an acute sense of politics-- he said that!-- and he even danced with me for a number. Yet when he got up to speak a few words, he got everyone wound up, even your father, and you know he never allows himself to get upset about politics. He's so right about everything, how the Muggle-borns are taking over and the pureblood lines are being diluted. He's got keen plans for fixing it all . . . and you know what's terrible? He said Voldemort's not a real name, that he's had to hide his true name to protect his family, isn't that sad? The Muggle-borns and crazed anti-pro-purebloods would come after him! It's a danger, he said, and there needs to be radical action to counter it. That's just what I've been looking for, less of this chat that your Father is into and more action! He's going to start an elite league of followers, and I told him I would join up, and that I would get you in, too, as soon as you're old enough to fight, maybe even before."

I was shocked but terribly flattered. I was only twelve, and yet I was one of the first invitations to the largest pro-pureblood movement since Grindelwald.

I did not meet Lord Voldemort, however, until the following summer.

Bellatrix graduated with honors from Hogwarts, Head Girl and second in her class, behind only Lucius Malfoy (whose father, I suspected, might have given a heavy donation to encourage). It was she, however, who spoke at the ceremony, giving a brilliant account of how our generation was on the verge of great changes for all of wizardkind, capable of creating a society more perfect than mankind had ever seen. She beautifully and subtly planted very discreet-- but obvious to those who knew her well-- hints about the nature of these changes. Our new society would be powerful, advanced, elite, and perfect-- such a perfect term for the purity and aristocracy of the pro-pureblood dream.

She received a letter a week later complimenting her speech, from none other than the man himself. The letter furthered to say that Lord Voldemort was curious to know if she was interested in taking action, as she had suggested in her speech, and now.

"He has such an interest in me," she glowed, showing me her congratulations.

It was not far after that the Malfoys held another gathering, though this time a more casual dinner party. I was welcome, too, but was dressed so much more casually than Bellatrix, who was dressed to the nines in hopes she might attract attention, her deep green robes low cut and tight at her waist. Sirius, too, was advised by Mummy to chat up some of the girls there; it would not be long before he was due to start courting. He appeared positively irked in his pine green dress robes, his hair charmed by Mother to be so sleek it couldn't be flipped attractively as he liked, and the girls, to Mummy's dismay, all knew him from school as the arrogant Gryffindor who frowned on their house, and he had a rotten antisocial evening.

It's not as if he didn't try a little, though. He used his usual sly, flirting tactics, and might have won over a couple girls-- who might forgive him for his pure blood and suave words-- if Mummy hadn't caught him at it.

"You're coming off as entirely too fast," she hissed in his ear as I stood by. "Look at your brother; he just politely TALKS, while you have to attempt to persuade them to get UNDRESSED."

"Bella does even more than that," Sirius sniffed.

"Bella," Mummy growled, "is three years older than you. She is entitled to be a little more--"

"Slutty?" Sirius suggested. "Whorish?"

"Watch your mouth!" Mummy's wand, point-down in her hand, jerked upward and Sirius slammed his hand involuntarily to his thigh, where she must have hexed him.

Andromeda, at sixteen, though hopelessly plain next to her older, more eligible sister, was still resplendant with her pink cheeks and pale blue robes-- her parents tolerated the Ravenclaw theme-- and Narcissa, only fourteen, outshone her with her large eyes, framing perfect golden curls, and flowing pink robes. I was in simple black; there was little attention needing to be paid to me yet. Narcissa was meant to be kept in the shadows, too, out of respect for her older sisters, but her mother couldn't help dolling up her beautiful daughter.

I avoided conversation, fearful I might embarrass myself by slipping up the rigors and rules, and spent the first half of the evening wandering the lavish Malfoy manor with Narcissa. She was captivated by the luxury, which, like the lighter hair of the Malfoys, was decorated in a much lighter Rococo style-- though it did little to mask the obvious dark culture that was embedded too in our own house.

I observed Bellatrix with her companions, the now-grown Lucius and Rodolphus who had always clung to her. Most of the time, it seemed, Lucius argued with her and Rodolphus agreed-- and though Rodolphus was duller, as well as weak and shifty-looking, he held more favor with her than the radiant but opinionated Lucius.

I stopped in my tracks, peeking out from behind a vast white pillar, when I saw a man in flowing, thick black robes appraoch Bellatrix's threesome. He carried an aura that radiated out to me; I knew him at once.

"My lord!" Bellatrix greeted him, kissing the hand he raised and giving a little bow. Rodolphus and Lucius both nodded their heads. They began an animated conversation that I could not hear but watched intently, feeling the essence of power pouring through me as I watched the tall and aging but still energetic man.

I noticed that Bellatrix had noticed me. Her eyes fell on me behind the pillar, and she turned Lord Voldemort to look at me. I stepped out from behind the pillar and she walked over, sweeping me to the man I held such fascination for.

"And this is my young cousin Regulus," Bellatrix introduced me. "He is only thirteen, but he shows such devotion to the cause already. He wrote several essays for the Daily Prophet-- a few rejected, such a scandal-- but all championing the pro-pureblood ideal. He truly understands what we are up against. He has even," she raised her eyebrows for effect, "denounced his own brother for his less-than-rigid feelings for impure blood."

"But Bella--" started Lucius.

"Bellatrix," Bella snapped to him acerbically. "To you, it's Bellatrix."

Lucius glowered at her. "BellaTRIX," he coughed lightly, "family and family loyalty-- the ideal of pure blood-- is one of the greatest causes we hold."

Bellatrix narrowed her eyes. "You know Sirius," she hissed. "You know what type of stance he takes. Regulus is wise. None of that type should be deemed as family."

Lord Voldemort laughed, a high, cruel, cold, mirthless laugh that gave me chills. It caught everyone's attention. He laid a thin white hand on Bellatrix's shoulder and turned his chilling dark eyes on me. "Regulus . . . " he whispered. "Well, if you are a loyal follower, perhaps when you are of age we can find use for you. Until then, however, there is little that can be done but spread the world . . . and perhaps train?" He raised his eyebrows at Bellatrix, Lucius, and Rodolphus.

"We are out of school, now," Bellatrix said gently.

"Rosier still remains. Avery, Crabbe, Goyle, Jugson, Mulciber, Travers, your brother--" he motioned to Rodolphus. "Have them take this boy into their inner circle. They know much already, and they may share what they have gained."

I felt myself growing tingly with excitement. Bellatrix sidestepped closer to Lord Voldemort. "I can take periodic visits back to the school," she cooed, oozing the charm she always did around men. "After all, I have four cousins there."

"You may take the lead on this, Bella, if you like," Lord Voldemort nodded to her. Lucius frowned behind him, but he sensed it and turned to him. "Lucius, my friend, I have other uses for you. Your father's connections at the Ministry . . . and I assume you shall be accompanying him at times? You have a way with persuasion, my apprentice, that Bella often lacks the patience for."

Lucius smiled as Bellatrix sniffed.

So began my training.

Bellatrix was perfectly welcome in her visits. It was my job to warn everyone concerned beforehand; she would write me to say she was visiting soon, and I would relay the message. Some of the teachers might have found it odd for most of Slytherin house to be so excited by one alumna's visits, but those who knew her-- and her charm-- accepted it. Besides, she was a clever, intelligent girl, and no one would object to being exposed to her.

Unfortunately, not everyone quite understood the code.

"Bella's visiting?" Barty asked me, wide-eyed, one day at dinner when I announced with a smile to the table that she would be in Hogsmeade the next weekend we were allowed to visit.

"BellaTRIX," I said through clenched teeth. He had not been given permission. "Yes, she is, but, er--"

"Can I see her? Where are you meeting her?"

"It's just a family--"

"You told Evan. And Severus. And-- hell, you told everybody, Regulus."

I sighed. Barty was, after all, my friend-- the only one in my year. "Fine, you can come along. Just . . . just . . . " I lowered my voice. "Whatever you do, don't tell your dad about it."

Barty's eyes grew wide. He understood-- somewhat.

When the weekend came, Bellatrix gave me an unpleasant look when I walked into the Hog's Head-- our meeting place (in which I was not allowed but was graciously shielded by the others) with Barty, but it soon abated when Barty humored us all with a detailed account on his father's plans for reforming the purity laws.

Bellatrix accosted me after the meeting. "Have you considered visiting Bartemius over holiday?" she asked. "Or is your Mummy being picky about the Crouches? They're not exactly . . . elite pure." She grinned, alighting the fanatical gleam in her eye that had become more and more prominent the more she worked with Lord Voldemort. "Infiltration," she whispered intriguingly. "Perhaps having Barty Crouch, Jr. on our side won't be so bad. His father is one of the key opponents to our cause, and if he tells his dear son everything . . . " she sniggered, a humming rumble in the back of her throat.

She beckoning Barty, who had been standing off to the side of an enclosed conversation between Rabastan Lestrange and Evan Rosier, and he came over willingly. Bellatrix leaned into him, grinning, dripping with her charm. "Barty," she said, "how would you like to join our cause? Ever considered that you're superior to all these folks your father works with?"

Barty glowered. "I've told my dad before he wouldn't even NEED to work if we were still in with high wizard society. We've got a pure line, but he insists on being so touchy-feely-everybody's-equal that he spends more time at work than at home."

Bellatrix smiled. Barty's pale blue eyes scanned hers, taken in. She put her hand under his chin and pulled even closer. I saw a faint blush spread throughout his pale face, bringing out his orangey freckles. "You truly understand, don't you?" she cooed. "You have the blood of your forefathers and the respect for them they would have wanted you to have. How would you like to bring Crouch to the top again? You know what you need to do."

Barty nodded as if entranced. Bella had recruited yet another.

By the end of second year, I had written my first editorial to the Daily Prophet. For a twelve-year-old, I thought I had done quite well. Those that agreed with me wrote in in response, saying that if a child knew this to be true, it must be so. Others wrote in about brainwashing and propaganda. Bella told me that this was good; controversy would stir up interest. Lord Voldemort, who had been working subtly behind the scenes all this time, would be very proud.

Proudest of all were Mummy and Father.

_Dear Regulus,_

_I can't express how proud we are of you. Your article was very well-written and intelligent. You clearly understand our society and its needs. It's regrettable Sirius has not learned as you have. It is a great relief to have a son that understands._

_-Mother_

I couldn't wait for breakfast to be over so I could run over and flaunt my win to Sirius. However, Mummy had already got it covered. As I had rushed through my letter, the last few owls arrived-- including one with a red envelope clutched in its beak, that landed right in front of Sirius.

He put his face in his hands as it exploded.

_SIRIUS BLACK! HOW IS IT YOUR YOUNGER-BY-TWO-YEARS BROTHER CAN GRASP EVERY CONCEPT WE'VE EVER TAUGHT YOU, BUT YOU CANNOT? HE HAS WRITTEN TO THE PAPERS, HE UNDERSTANDS SOCIETY SO WELL! HE TAKES INTEREST AND ACTION IN SOCIETY! WHAT DO YOU DO? SIT ON YOUR BUTT AND FORGET EVERYTHING WE TEACH YOU! WHY CAN'T YOU BE MORE LIKE REGULUS, AND GIVE A BLOODY DAMN ABOUT THINGS???_

The letter curled up into smoking shreds, and Sirius lifted his face, upon which I could detect just the faintest of pink. He blinked, trying to clear the screaming from his ears. From what I could tell, he didn't give a bloody damn about Mummy's letter, either.


	5. Intuition

_I do not own Harry Potter._

As soon as Bellatrix had graduated, at the end of that year, I felt impatient to get out in the world myself. Yet Bellatrix, still involved in her political work, was often scolded by her mother for delaying domesticity for this masculine job. The realm she was working in was nearly unanimously men, and Bellatrix was at her peak age for marriage and childbearing.

"Lucius Malfoy," Aunt Elladora suggested. "Rodolphus Lestrange. Evan Rosier, Avery, Wilkes, Nott, Mulciber . . . "

"If I marry one of the men I work with," she would always reply cooly, "they will never view me the same again. I am trying to make them forget I am even a woman in the battlefield."

"But you're fighting for the cause of perservation of your way of life, are you not?" Father pointed out. "Your way of life includes women in fields of marriage and domesticity-- and society, of course."

Yet Bellatrix had found her niche, and it was not in motherhood. She felt no need to nurture small children of her own. She had Lord Voldemort's followers, our green minds intelligent and keen to hang on her every word. She didn't want to feed and clothe shrieking babies or force them to recite their alphabet. She wanted to clothe us with experience and have us reciting vows of allegiance to our families. I, her relation and her student, was, for once, a favorite.

Finally, however, in the name of her cause, she gave in. She was engaged to Rodolphus Lestrange at a Halloween party my third year. He was the first to ask, and she gave in to him; he was not the stubborn rival she held in Lucius Malfoy. He would allow her her own freedom-- and of course he supported her cause. They were married over Christmas holiday, in the Lestrange manor with all the trimmings, guests, pomp, and circumstance. Lucius, who at the beginning of the ceremony appeared slightly jealous over his lost fortune, was all but refreshed after dancing with Narcissa, who was four years his younger but still as stunning as Bellatrix, in a younger, blonder, paler, pinker, more fragile and feminine way. The two seemed to suit each other better; Narcissa allowed Lucius his freedom more so than Bellatrix would have, standing politely in the background but still serving as a magnificent trophy of a wife. After all, she was a Black.

My Christmas present from Bellatrix that year changed my life forever.

For the reception, all of the guest families were invited to stay in the Lestrange manor, which was well-equipped for company, with more guest rooms than generations in our family. I shared with Sirius a flat of red velvet decor, part of a suite shared with my parents. We, as well as Bellatrix's own parents and sisters, were closer to the rest of the family's quarters than the other lesser guests. Bellatrix, the newlywed, for the first few days emerged only to visit us and Rodolphus's family, though the entire house was filled to the brim with members of our cause. I wondered why they were meant to stay if they could not even see the guests of honor.

I learned why about four days after the ceremony.

It was full moon. After a long day of continued lavish feasting and various activities-- and a little time with the whole family to chat with Bellatrix and Rodolphus-- I went back to the room. Sirius stood at the window, the thick curtains drawn open with a hand so he could privately watch the blue-white light cast on the falling snow, accumulating in thick piles on the vast grounds below. The Lestrange manor was no more lavish than our own, but instead the aura of a Victorian townhome, the manor and grounds were charmed to appear like a country stead, with vast pine forests and a lake beyond-- though they did not truly exist. The present Lestrange patriarch was rather fond of rustic settings, so he emerged himself in their illusion.

Sirius seemed rather wistful, watching the moon and sighing to himself. I asked him if he wanted to go down to the large stone bath that was heated magically out in the back grounds. He shook his head and said he'd rather just go on to bed. I scoffed at his disdain for all the fun he could be having; away from the new Mistress Lestrange and the family he was finally free to do what he wanted-- and he wanted to sleep.

"You go on ahead," he told me. "Don't let me spoil your fun, for Merlin's sake. Go find Barty or Rabastan or something. Or Snape." He sniffed at the last suggestion.

That I did. I knocked on the door of the apartment I knew Barty was staying in-- he alone was invited out of his family-- and just as he came out, in a silk dressing robe he had been supplied with in case of wanting to use the bath, we were both accosted by none other than Bellatrix herself.

"We have a surprise for you boys," Bellatrix grinned. "Help me wake the others."

I hadn't realized that it was almost midnight and some of the others might be in bed. Barty and I knocked on the doors down the endless hallways, bringing out our friends in various levels of disgruntled wakefulness. Victor Crabbe practically sleepwalked behind us, while Evan Rosier leaped along beside us, jumpy, eyes wide.

Bellatrix had instructed us to meet in the grand entry hall, and that we did. Some of us were in pajamas, others in dressing gowns, but Bellatrix, Rodolphus, Lucius, and Rabastan-- no doubt in on the plan-- were in black hooded cloaks. Bella hastened to my side, and waved her wand over me. The silk robe, green flannel pajamas, and slippers wooshed into a flowing black robe at her command. Rodolphus, Lucius, and Bellatrix-- the three of age-- went around the gathering, continuing to transform everyone into the proper attire.

"Come, we're going on a little journey," Bellatrix grinned. "Everyone take hands, and hopefully the three of us will have enough power to Apparate everyone."

We all obeyed. I felt Barty's sweaty palm in one hand, Evan's shaking, dry one in the other. I could not see the faces of anyone because of the cloaks, the which of mine sat heavy around my own face, hiding me as well.

From the entryway of the Lestrange manor, in which all of our parents, sisters, brothers unincluded, and even the Lestrange patriarch and matriarch themselves slept onward, we, a bunch of pureblooded, aristocratic, young wizards, Apparated into the night.

We appeared in the Forbidden Forest.

"Hogwarts?" I heard someone whisper.

"The danger intrigues the Dark Lord," someone replied. "So close to the enemy."

"And yet there is nowhere in England such a magical forest," said someone else.

The Dark Lord?

As if to answer my question, I heard high cold laughter echo from all around me. Those in the cloaks shifted around, looking for the source. Suddenly, in the middle of the circle, a great black-cloaked figure rose up, as if solidifying from a melted puddle.

"Lord Voldemort," someone whispered reverently.

Someone repeated the name, then another, then another, until the name was wooshing around the circle like a gust of wind. I felt it coming towards me and whispered it myself: "Lord Voldemort."

It gave me chills.

The laugh grew louder, now obviously focused from the figure in the center of the circle. It was the one man important who had not shown up to Bellatrix and Rodolphus's wedding. He said nothing to either of them-- nothing to anyone. He addressed us all as a whole.

"Welcome to the fold," came the high voice. It felt like a cold wind, reaching everyone. "You, my chosen elite, the best of the best, the creme de la creme . . . the heirs of your families, the offspring of the finest lines known to wizardkind. You stand here before me to reclaim your golden pasts and their birthright, take hold of your destinies with your newfound power. You are the youth, with your strength to fight and your young idealistic minds."

He was inspiring in words, but everything about him was entracing. He was even better than Bellatrix. His sheer height was overpowering, his voice chilling to the bone-- heartstopping-- his gestures perfected. I was taken in.

"You know the reason for any and all of your obstacles. You have been forced to hide this feeling, it is frowned on by the Muggle-born-corrupted society you live in. Yet now you must realize these boundaries and overcome them. Severus Snape," his voice boomed. A few heads turned in the circle; within our cloaks we did not know who was who. "You are of a fine line tracing back to ancient centuries, before even some of the purest, powerful lines. Yet because of the corruption of our lines, yours has been pressed to the bottom, and you live in less than perfection while those of foul blood live above you. Yet you deserve better. You, with your pure blood. You deserve to live in a world where that counts for something. And do not forget that those that torment you . . . all are bloodtraitors, Gryffindors, the lowest of our line."

"Lucius Malfoy," he continued. "Your father has been forced to lie in the presence of the Ministry to protect certain practices in your home. This is a stain on your family's honor, brought about all by Muggle-borns."

"Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange," he seemed to be going around the circle. " . . . and the recent Bellatrix Lestrange. You, all three, long for adventure and culture, a thirst for the Dark Arts . . . which you cannot practice because they are deemed evil, a result of our Muggle-favoring culture."

On he went, blaming every problem each of us had on Muggle-borns and interbreeding. Mulciber was not Head Boy because some of the teachers were Muggle-born and they favored the Muggle-born students. Macnair was not top in his class because the curriculum favored students with Muggle background. Even Jugson's failure to make the Quidditch team or Wilkes's allergy to wool had something to do with Muggle-borns, in some brilliant roundabout but still viable fashion.

Finally, he got to Bellatrix and me. "Regulus Black . . . and Bellatrix, as well; you must carry concern for the bloodline that bore you." His voice drew to a whisper. "Your family shall be torn apart by Muggle-borns. It has been clear to me. One greatly treasured has been lost already to the degenerate mindset of our time. Two more shall follow, one of corrupted blood, one of weakened will. The fight shall require strength not all possess. Purifying of your blood is necessary . . . " he faded off whispily.

I felt my heart thudding against my chest. We had not one, but THREE sources of degeneration and shame in our family? My mind instantly flew to Sirius. Was he that obvious? Blood pounded in my head. How could he be so stupid, so inconsiderate, so shameful as to make clear his inferior ways? He was holding the reputation for all of us, and failing . . . and if what Lord Voldemort said was true . . .

Yet I couldn't think of who the second and third would be. Narcissa, Andromeda, Mummy, Father, Uncle Alphard, Aunt Elladora . . . my head throbbed.

I felt sick for the rest of his speech. I could not help but grow angry at his words. Our family was going to be torn apart; it was inevitable. They were weak, lost to the other side, unwilling to fight back for what was obviously right. How could they?

I would have to make up for them.

Lord Voldemort timed his Disapparation so that he was gone just as the first ray of sunlight dashed across where he stood. I felt a hand grab from one side, so I grabbed the hand on the other side, and, after a brief tug behind my navel, I landed with a communal thud in the now-lit great hall of the Lestrange manor.

"Depart!" Bellatrix commanded. "Quietly!"

As everyone flew in various directions to their rooms-- I wondered why Bellatrix was so secretive in such a safe house-- I went to her side.

I started, "Do you--"

"Sirius," she snapped, not even looking at me.

"And the others?"

She pursed her lips. "At least it will not be you or I," she whispered, still looking away. "That is all we can hope for. If our blood carries such fault . . . it is well gotten rid of."

I thought about how lucky it was she was out of the family, in theory. If Sirius ruined us, I would have linger with the shame on my surname for the rest of my life.

However, when I got into my room, I could see Sirius still nestled in his covers in the bed on the opposite side of the room. The curtains were still drawn so that only a thin line of light came in from the morning sun beyond. I stood over my still-sleeping brother for a moment, watching him. Aside from the violently disarranged covers, he looked rather peaceful, his hair flopped placidly around his face, his eyes softly shut, even his lips just calmly pursed so that a thin stream of air could go in and out. I lauged internally; he reminded me of a male Sleeping Beauty from one of Andromeda's fairy tales. Sirius had never snored; the loudest he got was his violent tossing and turning.

Lying there, he looked like a Black. His dark hair, his olive skin, the lines of his face in the distinct family shape. He seemed proud, too, almost arrogant. Arrogant and handsome-- the way Mummy had loved him when he was a child. In sleep, he didn't seem any different. He seemed completely safe this way.

For a moment, I wished he was still Mummy's favorite. I wished I hadn't ruined him.

He wouldn't have to leave.

Sirius stirred on the bed beneath my watching gaze. His eyes opened and focused on me, and then he bolted upright. "Regulus! What are you doing?" His breathing came in short gasps.

I stepped back, feeling sheepish. Sirius sat up and leaned against the headboard, recuperating. "Gaa, Merlin, Regulus . . . scare people to death." He pushed his hair out of his eyes. "And on right bloody full moon, for Merlin's sake . . . "

"Right, because I'm a bloody werewolf," I snapped, back to my credible impression of hating him.

"Oh, I forgot, Blacks don't DO werewolf, do they?" he said sarcastically, not meeting my eyes. "They wouldn't turn into one, even if they were bitten, just because they're above that, aren't they?"

"We're not stupid enough to get ourselves bitten," I retorted acerbically.

Sirius shook his head. "You're so naive, Regulus. Naive and stupid. Do me a favor and shut up and go back to sleep."

He was lost already.


	6. Degeneration

_Thank you, reviewers! True and TRF-Chan . . . I am most grateful _

_Now everything starts to fall apart . . . muhaha . . . _

_I do not own Harry Potter._

The end of my third year came with little excitement. There was a gap in what would otherwise be adjacent graduations, and aside from Bellatrix's marriage, little had changed in the house aside from aging. Narcissa was going into 5th year-- though she was not made prefect as Andromeda had-- and Sirius received his OWL scores (O's in Tranfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts, A's in Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, Study of Ancient Rubes, E's in Potions, Herbology, and one D in History of Magic-- the class he didn't care much for). Father was satisfied, but Mummy pointed out there was more to prestige than grades, and it was too bad he had never tried out for Quidditch.

"That's James's realm; he'd kill me," Sirius explained.

"Then beat James at his own game and I reckon he'll keep quiet," Father chortled.

Sirius rolled his eyes. Father saw and cleared his throat.

Things went on like that as summer holiday went on. Sirius's subtle provocations were illicitingly larger responses every time. Unfortunately, Mummy seemed to only make it worse.

At dinner one evening-- more importantly, one in which Bellatrix had come, accompanied by Rodolphus, as well as my aunt and uncle and unmarried cousins-- things were really pushed to the breaking point.

"Sirius, your father and I have been considering your future . . . as we often do," Mummy started cooly, "and we do believe it is high time you started taking thought as to whom you plan to marry."

Sirius raised his eyebrows. "Andromeda's older than me and she's not thinking about it yet."

She stared hard back at him. "We are not referring to Andromeda. And Andromeda is not the heir; what happens to her is not as important to the entire family." She dropped her gaze coldly back to her food and went on icily, "You will, of course, consider Slytherin girls above all others. They create the best pureblooded unions, and, considering how you seem to have played around with all eligible girls in the other houses--" Sirius was notorious for his short flings "-- the most lasting relationships would be formed by those you have never encountered in that way previously." She turned to Father, "I think the Slytherin style of courtship is so much more practical . . . not this silly dating and gamboling around with each other, breaking each other's hearts and destroyed what might have been perfect if you were older. Girls remain with girls and boys with boys until they are all of an appropriate age."

Sirius snorted. "So that explains it."

Mummy glared at him. "Excuse me?"

Sirius rolled his eyes away. "Nothing. Just though Regulus was getting a little too friendly with Bartemius Crouch the other day."

My jaw dropped open and I felt myself blushing, though, of course, he lied.

Mummy's face paled and her eyes narrowed. Father snorted into his drink. Bellatrix, however, remained cool, and replied, "I find it terribly hypocritical of you to make such blatant assumptions about our House. I thought you were against that sort of thing."

Sirius sighed and tipped his head back against the velvet padding of the chair.

Mummy continued on with her point. "Sirius, instead of scoffing at the girls in Slytherin House, perhaps you would do well to associate with them. You're ruining your chances of an advantageous marriage; we may have to search at Durmstrang to give you a fresh slate. Now . . . you're going to have to make nice with those of Slytherin House. You're not above them; you're quite equal. I've heard dreadful stories of things you've said to them, and don't think their mothers haven't given me grief over it."

Sirius raised his eyebrows, arms still folded unhappily. "Like what?" His voice carried a slight hint of falter, though.

Mummy met his eyes. "You've gotten more detention slips for tormenting those you should be in favor with than I've ever heard of. Mrs. Goyle said you give him obnoxious glances to her son every time you pass. You throw impertinent comments to Mr. Macnair's son, and I heard you overturned the Travers boy's cauldron in Potions on purpose."

"And you depantsed Severus Snape," I added, recalling the terrible rumors that had been circulating the last few weeks of school.

"Oh, and none of them right well deserved it!" retorted Sirius miserably, eyebrows furrowed. "As if THEY don't slip me nasty comments about being a degenerate pureblood, a lion in snake's clothing . . . the looks they give me are nothing like the ones I give them. YOU try dealing with the lot of them--"

"The LOT OF THEM are your future society members, and you must learn to get along with them!" Mummy snapped.

"How come I have to learn to get along with your friends, but you never bother to even meet mine? Do you know that James and Remus and Peter get together all the time during holiday without me, and they think something's a bit fishy that in the five years I've known them, they've never once been invited over, and they invite me to their places just about every summer and I always have to say no, I have to go hob-nob with all the people I hate all year long, and pretend like I'm friends with them. It's awfully rude, you know, not having THEM other when they're my real friends-- and if I'm the heir, the future patriarch, with all these responsibilies and such, shouldn't I have at least enough power to say who I want to visit me in the house?"

Father opened his mouth to argue, but Mummy stepped in first, her voice sleek and calculating.

"You want to invite them over? Your friends . . . Potter, Lupin, Pettigrew . . . " she turned to look to Father. "I see no reason why not. Not the best families in the world, but at least pure. Yes, all right. Invite them over sometime this week."

Sirius looked astounded at this. He raised his eyebrows and didn't say another word, eating his dinner with renewed satisfaction.

James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew came over through Floo the following Thursday. As my company typically stayed far away from Sirius's foursome, I had never seen all of them up close. I watched one of them as he talked to Sirius animatedly about the dark style of the house, unaware of my gaze. He had a thin face, dark, spikey hair, and glasses, and he had a compulsion to brush his hair back every few minutes. I wasn't very impressed; I had heard girls were crazy about him, but it had to come solely from his Quidditch abilities, as there was nothing attractive about him. I had trouble watching Sirius's second companion, who was taller than the first friend but shorter than Sirius, with sandy brown hair, large bags under his eyes, a five 'o-clock shadow, and a very melancholy air. He noticed every time I began to watch him, so I could not keep my eyes on him for long. He was quieter, observing the room without speaking. The last friend was the shortest, chubby and positively disgusting. His hair was a dirty blond, and his eyes were small and watery and when he saw me looking at him, he shot me a devilish, malevolent grin, sniggered, and cut into Sirius's conversation. He struck me more as a minion than a friend; the type we Slytherin types would take advantage of, not befriend.

The four of them disappeared with Sirius. He did not show them around the house, or have them in for tea in the parlor, but hustled them off to his room so they could be alone. It was not the type of treatment I was used to, and I could see Mummy flinch at the social faux pas. She had not even been introduced.

"Sirius knows formalities better than that," she scoffed.

"I don't think he wants to be formal," I sighed.

"Yes; it would probably be a waste on those Gryffindors; they don't appreciate it like we do."

I spent the afternoon in the library, curiously waiting for some show of the others. It did not come until dinner.

Father, Mummy, and I sat on one side of the table, leaving the other four in a lineup across from us. The sandy-haired boy sat on one side of Sirius, the dark-haired boy on the other, with the chubby one on the other side of him. Sirius finally introduced them as Remus, James, and Peter. Remus nodded his head with a polite, "Pleased to meet you," but James grinned and waved cheekily at all of us and Peter did nothing at all-- except snigger, which he had been doing since he sat down. Kreacher served the meal, and James nearly had a heart attack. "Merlin! What IS that thing?"

"It's a House Elf," I explained, my voice impatient.

James looked at me with raised eyebrows, as if daring me to use that tone with him again. He didn't seem to realize that this was my house, not school, and though he was older than me, there were many more ways in which I was superior.

"It's ugly as hell," he whispered to Sirius. "How can you eat with that thing standing around?"

Sirius sniffed, "Would you rather serve yourself?"

James laughed, "You have a point. Luxury, with a price. I guess I could get used to this."

Father began to talk dully about a new Ministry bill on regulated Muggle-Wizard trade, something impotent that would not inflame-- or interest-- the guests. I thought I felt something brushing against my bare leg, just below my shorts. I reached down to brush it aside, thinking it a loose piece of fabric from the underside of the ancient chairs, but my finger came into contact with something rubbery-- and then a pair tiny, sharp, razor-like teeth sunk into my flesh.

I screamed and withdrew my hand, shaking it in the air. There was a doxy firmly attached to it. My legs knocked against the chair legs, and more doxies flew out from underneath my seat, latching on to wherever there was bare skin-- which was nearly everywhere as I was in summer clothes.

One side of the table burst into laughter. Mummy saw me and duly chanted a charm to freeze the doxies, then she dashed off to get a vial of anti-venom from somewhere in Father's stores.

Squeezing my injured finger, where the venom was spreading faster, I glared at James, Peter, and Remus. Remus had a napkin to his mouth and I didn't think he was laughing, but there was a concentrated flush of pink in his cheeks. James and Peter, however, were nearly crying with mirth. Sirius bit his cheek and met my eyes.

I felt my heart rate speed up-- which was dangerous, considering the poison in my system. "You did that!" I cried. "You did that on purpose! You put those doxies there! Sirius, your friends put doxies under my chair so they'd bite me!"

Sirius snorted, "Did you figure that out yourself, Reg?"

James's and Peter's laughter renewed, James slapping the table. Sirius grinned with them, satisfied, and turned his head slowly away from me.

His eyes rested on Father and all the color rushed from his face.

Father's eyes were bugging, and his face was cold and completely mask-like. He raised his wand without a word, and Sirius was flung backwards into the wall, his chair flipping backwards with a heavy clatter to land on the flagstone floor.

James's and Peter's laughter stopped immediately.

Shocked and frightened, Sirius stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as Father held him magically against the wall, so angry his wand arm was trembling. Remus averted his eyes and snapped his head down to look at his food. James stared at Father. Peter stared at Sirius.

"You," Father said coldly, word by word, through clenched teeth. "Do. Not. Hurt. Your. Brother."

Suddenly, Sirius's face contorted and he let out a short, painful groan, his eyes squeezing shut. Father was not speaking, but it was obvious he was still performing curses on his son.

I felt chills run up and down my skin. He was doing this because of me. Mummy returned with the anti-venom and handed a rag soaked with it to me. I rubbed it gently on my wounds, but kept my eyes on Sirius, just as she did.

Father still spoke firmly. "Even Regulus knows this. He and I had a chat the time he insulted you. However, he has stopped, and you continue on. You asked me last time why it was always you and never Regulus in our sessions in my office? Well, there's your answer. You're the heir, and I demand greater things from you . . . but, most importantly, Regulus never seems to misbehave, does he?"  
With all of his contortions and painful yelps, I couldn't see how Sirius could even hear Father. Though horrified, part of me welled up in pride at this revelation.

"I have always given you the courtesy of privacy, Sirius," Father went on, his face still as immobile as ever. "Yet that seems to be doing you no good, as you emerge haughty and unmarked around these friends of yours. Perhaps you are due for some humiliation."

Father's wand tip raised and Sirius fell forward to the floor. Remus sucked in a deep breath, still not daring to look. James looked from Father to Sirius, his teeth gritted in compassionate pain. Peter squirmed in his seat. I held my breath.

"I would never disgrace you in front of our friends and neighbors; I would not want to admit in front of them the shameful acts you commit. Yet you have given me the perfect opportunity, in front of your own friends."

"Sir--" James started up. It was a perfect study in Gryffindor character; he defended Sirius, "Er, erm . . . we were all responsible . . . so, please, don't punish Sirius for all of us. It was . . . it was my idea." Remus looked up for a moment in agreement, his eyes bright.

Father jerked his gaze towards James. James jumped back, a bit startled by the terrible expression. Yet he spoke mildly. "I am not responsible for the rest of you, or what your parents may do to you. I am, however, in charge of Sirius, and my own son knows better than this and knows he will be severely punished for it."

James clenched his jaw again, looking hopeless. He did not speak again.

Father stood up so that he could reach the fallen Sirius, and soon his wand was up, pointed to the crumpled figure on the floor that I could no longer see. James and Peter stared at him, their faces lined with shock, but Remus buried his head in his hands, and I saw several wrinkles appear on his forehead.

A vein throbbed in Father's temple, but he was still silent. I held the cool, wet rag between my wounded finger and leg, staring at the gap between Remus's and James's chairs, trying to hide from them how truly shocked I was. The only noises were those of Sirius's shuffling about on the stone floor in convulsion of pain, and the occasional yelp. He did not sceam outright; his noises were quiet and animal-like, like a dog in pain. He whined through his throat and gave little yips. It sent shivers through me. Father couldn't have been using the Cruciatus, but whatever it was was coming close. After all, there were so many painful options: Stinging Hexes, burning curses, muscle-tensing jinxes, even spells to recreate the feeling of being flogged.

Finally, the scuffle subsided. Father lowered his wand. James looked meekly to him, then kneeled on the floor besides Sirius, ducking out of sight behind the table. Remus leaned over, too. Peter rubbernecked to watch.

"Sirius, mate, you alright?" I heard one of them coo.

"Leave him alone, boys," Father directed. "Regulus, will you please show them the way to the Floo?"

The three companions jerked their heads up to stare at me. Peter's gaze was slightly accusatory, noting it my fault their prank had gone so awry. James and Remus, however, appeared very ashamed; they knew where the blame really laid.

I got up and went out, and they followed without a word, casting sympathetic glances to Sirius, who still lied--probably unconscious-- on the floor. I heard them whispering to one another as we entered the parlor, out of earshot of the others.

"Moony, did you have any idea? Merlin . . . " James breathed, drawing the others up close to him.

"He said he didn't like his dad much," offered Peter.

"Yeah, and I'm not too keen on my dad all the time, either, but he doesn't do THAT to me."

"He's been hiding it from us all along," sighed Remus, wiping his sweaty forehead. "I think he's ashamed."

"Or worried they'll punish him for saying something."

"His dad didn't even have to say the spells!" squeaked Peter in amazement.

"They're very powerful wizards, the Blacks," whispered Remus. "They don't have to."

"I feel bloody awful."

"Me too."

None of them looked at me, so I cleared my throat and gestured to the mantle, where the Floo powder lay in a small silver case.

James swallowed and took a fistful. "We'll go to my place for a while, eh, mates?"

The other two nodded. They took their powder and went into the fireplace, one at a time.

I came back into the dining room, this time from an angle that I could see Sirius at. He still lay shivering on the floor at Father's feet; Father leaned over just as I came in and yanked him upright. Sirius stood before him, eyes lowered, shoulders shuddering violently.

"Let us hope that had some desirable effect," Father said, lifting Sirius's chin with his hand and forcing his eyes into his son's. "You are excused now." Sirius slipped away without a word, overflowing with shame, pain, humiliation, and perhaps even a bit of pure hatred.

Mummy came up behind me from where I stood in the doorway and took my hand into hers. She scanned my finger, upon which there was a large purple welt. I felt terribly guilty, witnessing Sirius's severe punishment for my injury and yet taking no great pains to remedy it myself.

"You don't think they'll tell anyone, do you?" Mummy asked Father.

Father smirked, "Oh no. They're Gryffindors. They're too ashamed to say anything at all to anyone else. They think it's part of their own punishment. Besides," he scoffed, "they have no connections."

"I only worry. Our own heir . . . " she sighed and broke off. Then she turned to me and smiled, "At least we don't have to worry about our little Regulus, right?"

I went up to bed not soon after. Sirius's door was locked. However, I sensed he was not asleep. I still retained the old power of being able to tell when my brother was awake or not. Sure enough, only a few hours after I had crawled into my own bed, kept awake by the knowledge that he was not yet asleep, I heard rustling from within his room.

I crept to the door and peered out of it, only opening it a crack. Sirius was still fully dressed, his Hogwarts coat on his back. He dragged his footlocker silently along the green carpeted floor. I knew what was going on at once.

"You're running away?" I gasped from within my doorway. The door swung open, out of my hands.

Sirius's panic-stricken eyes jerked up to meet mine. He dropped the handle of his suitcase. "Going to tell on me, Regulus? Go on ahead," he sighed in defeat.

I pursed my lips, scanning the situation. If I screamed for Mummy, she and Father would rush up here and in a matter of seconds have Sirius writhing on the floor again, making the same piteous animal noises he had at dinner. Yet if I let him go, he would no longer be a stain on our family. I wouldn't have to worry about his shaming us in front of our friends. I, I would be the heir. Sirius would be safe.

"Why?" was all I could say.

Sirius raised his eyebrows. "You saw that in there! That's not the first time it's happened."

"I know," I whispered, bending to scratch one of the welts on my leg. "He's done it to me, too, you know."

He shook his head. "It's madness, Regulus, madness. In front of my friends . . . not that they'll hate me for it; they'll probably feel sorry for me," his voice carried a bitter edge, "But, it just goes to show . . . " he faded off, sighing and and running his hand back through his long hair, letting it fall back into his eyes. "You might be able to stand for it. You've always been able to take it. You obey them. I just . . . I just can't. I don't know if you think it's right or what, but I'm not going to stay in a place where I'm forced to believe something I know isn't true. Blood purity, elitism, the Dark Arts . . . it doesn't MEAN anything to me. I can't make it. In fact, I disagree entirely with it. Now, I find being the heir the worst punishment in the world, but you, you seem like you might be able to work with it." He smiled slightly. "Just be careful, okay? You don't have to obey everything they say, you know? You have to have some conscience of your own, too."

I folded my arms, pretending to be cold when I in fact felt remarkably tender, so different from that day in which he had almost smothered me. Yet I still brought it up. "Stop trying to subvert me, Sirius," I said mildly, "and just get out before I change my mind."

Sirius's eyes seemed to fill with a little more life as he smiled back. "As long as you wait until I'm out the door, I'll be fine."

He lugged up his suitcase and was gone.

I watched out the window, but never saw him leave. I thought I saw a shadow creeping through the bushes, but it didn't look human. Sirius must have taken the back way out.

I realized something, something that explained why I suddenly felt so tender now that my greatest enemy was gone. All of my life, Sirius had everything I always wanted. He was the heir, Bella's best companion, Mummy's favorite. Yet all of his life, he had done everything in his power to change that, to switch places with me. I had helped him along, thinking him the enemy, never realizing the entire transition was intended-- and in my favor.

The switch was complete.


	7. Corruption

_I do not own Harry Potter._

_Thank you, reviewers, again! True, Cam, TRF-Chan . . . _

The next morning, chaos broke out. Kreacher had been the first to discover Sirius's absence. He went into his bedroom to dig around as he always did during the night, doing who knows what, and found that his Young Master was gone without a trace.

Mummy was alerted at once. She accosted me, and I told her I hadn't heard anything, but I had noticed Sirius's trunk was gone. Father woke and alerted our cousins via Floo, probably hoping, no doubt, that he had gone off for an early visit with Andromeda.

"Oh, when I find that boy, he is going catch it," Father muttered to himself after drawing his head out of the fire. I felt myself tremble slightly. I was, after all, an accomplice.

Uncle Alphard, Aunt Elladora, Andromeda, and Narcissa soon emerged in our drawing room. "He's gone?" Aunt Elladora gasped. "But why?" Andromeda and Narcissa watched me curiously.

"There was an issue last evening," Father said slightly. "Alphard, do you think he might have gone off with one of his bloodtraitor friends?"

Uncle Alphard turned around calmly. "To tell you the truth, I don't think you should even bother looking." The women gasped. He went on cooly, "Sirius left for a reason. You said there was an issue, brother, and I think I suspect what that might be. I now point out to you that perhaps that is a legitimate reason for flight."

"He's the bloody heir! He can't just walk out! He's part of this family!"

Uncle Alphard sighed. "If you love your son, you should be happy he's found his own happiness. If you love your bloodline, you should be happy he's gone and unable to shame it. Either way, it's a win-win situation. You know you didn't trust Sirius to carry on the line. That's why you were always so hard on him, and that's exactly why he left." He pointed to me, "Now Regulus is left, and, admit it, you've always thought of him as more the favorite."

Mummy put her hand gently on my shoulder but did not look at me. "Regulus has always been more the model child, yes, certainly. But it is Sirius's birthright he should be the heir. Some things are foreordained in blood. It's the same natural order that deems the superiority of pure blood." I felt my stomach fall slightly. They still wanted the real heir.

"Exactly," piped up Andromeda. "And both of those have flaws from time to time."

"Hush!" Aunt Elladora shook Andromeda's shoulder.

Uncle Alphard sighed and shrugged wearily. "All I'm saying is that if you force the unwilling boy to carry on your family, it will never be as gloriously cared for as you have hoped. Perhaps it is a blessing in disguise that Regulus now takes the helm."

Everyone's eyes all landed simultaneously on me, including Uncle Alphard's. They all carried various degrees of expectation and doubt. Still, the compliment filled me. I was the heir, the firstborn, the leader, the favorite.

Mummy drew in a ragged breath. "I had always hoped Sirius would fall into line. And Alphard, the shame . . . it's not as if he's dead. The others will know."

He shrugged. "They've known for years he's a Gryffindor, and they've seen how he acts. Their children go to school with him. It will come as no surprise to them. You're saving yourself shame in the future, when he leads the family, the enemy of all the other heirs. Regulus is in quite well with them."

Father shifted so that he stood squarely in front of me. I regarded him respectfully. "Well, Regulus," he said sternly, "Are you prepared for this?"

"It's . . . it's an honor," I stammered out.

Mummy squeezed my shoulders consolingly. "Regulus will need less teaching than his brother. The foul boy was scum, thicker than lead, thoroughly wrong in the mind. It's as if he had corrupted blood from the very beginning." Her words were so acerbic I knew they were in defense. My heart fell further.

Kreacher, who had been lingering around Mummy's feet the entire time, tugged at her skirt and offerred consolingly, "Young Master-- The Blood Traitor," he corrected, "-- is not fit to wipe slime from Mistress's boots."

"Well, that settles that," sighed Uncle Alphard, looking as tired and weary as Sirius's friend Remus. He went back into the fire, followed by his family.

Mummy was still not satisfied. She went straight into the room with the giant sprawling family tree, upon which lay every Black relation. I sensed the weight of this moment and froze in the doorway. Without asking permission from Father or even announcing her intent, she pointed her wand at the bottom of the tree. A small, charred mark appeared, smoking slightly, and she laughed coldly.

"Gone. Good riddance. Blood traitor, abomination, shame of my flesh!"

The rest of the summer was thoroughly enjoyable. Nobody greeted my newfound birthright with more enthusiasm than Bellatrix, who first pointed out it was the Dark Lord's prophecy and then added that it was perfect that our line was now headed by one of the purest of mind. I enjoyed her compliment, yet there was still a lingering shame; if I was so pure, why did I still feel such devotion to a brother who had proven himself the lowest of the low?

There were further balls that year, and this time it was I who received attention from the eligible ladies, though I was still only fourteen. I knew them by face, but none had revealed themselves in person to me until now-- it was as if I had experienced a coming-out. Narcissa helped me, informing me who the best girls were, which had the nasty habits like snoring and nail-biting, and which had already given themselves to boys, secretly. I hadn't known that within the sex-separate dormitories of Slytherin there was some intermingling of that nature. I made a vow I would not tolerate a wife who indulged in a behavior obviously encouraged by the permissive society created by Muggle-borns.

I returned to school more popular but with a sobriety brought about by the burden of knowing my secret crime of collusion with Sirius. I was amazed to see Sirius in the best health since before he had started school. He was chatting with his friends as if all were right in the world-- which, in his world, it must have been. I should have known his friends would help him out. It was the Gryffindor way.

For the first time I started paying attention to what Andromeda was up to. If she did not associate with the family favorites as Bellatrix, Narcissa, and I did, who were her companions? Her mother had allowed her to have her best friend, Emmaline Vance, over a few times, so I had met her and knew the bright redhead was a pureblood, but Sirius's friends had been pureblood and they still caused such a scene. Andromeda was in a House that allowed her to contact Muggle-borns. I was curiously to know: Did she spurn them, or did she accept them?

I did not know the name and background of all of the students in the school, but I knew that all of Andromeda's potential friends could never be perfectly accepted by our family. Sirius, however, was defensive of her right to choose, defending her against her own family of which he was once part of.

He caught me one day as I watched Andromeda from one of the stairwells. She had crossed the hall and taken the hand of a plain-looking boy with brown hair, leaning her own brown-haired head against his shoulder. It was a rather drab-looking relationship, plain, so different from the glamor and covert but ever-present sexiness of Slytherin relationships.

Yet I felt a thrill when I turned to find Sirius standing over me, his wand up so that it brushed under my chin as I turned. I sucked in a gasp of breath. I met him with open regard, but his face did not melt. He had cast me off in the way I, the insensitive Slytherin, was meant to-- not the other way around. He was a Gryffindor who regarded me in the same way as every other Slytherin, as scum.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I was just--"

"You leave Andromeda alone, understand?"

I pursed my lips in indignation, feeling the curiosity well up in me. His defense could only mean negativity. Andromeda was up to something. "Why, what is she up to?"

He pressed his wand up further into my throat. I stifled a gasp. "It's none of your business." I knew he could very easily hex me as he had earlier, this time without the reserve of the fear of the punishment from Father. "And if I catch you spying on her again . . . " he pressed the wand still further into my flesh, making me to gag.

"You have no power over me anymore, blood traitor," I choked, defensive myself.

I felt a sudden burning sensation spreading from the tip of Sirius's wand across the underside of my chin. I drew back, scratching the flesh but avoiding the wand. I put my hand to the wound; he had performed a Stinging Hex on the sensitive part of my neck.

He smirked. "I've gotten good at that; I don't even have to say the incantation anymore," he taunted. "I think it's because of all those times Father did them when you told on me." He smiled, mocking me, purely blissful at this revenge. "And this time, I can't get in trouble at all, can I?"

"Black!"

Both of us turned to see the Gryffindor Head of House, the severe woman with the thin glasses, coming towards us. She addressed the elder Black. "Detention. I don't care if he's your--" she caught herself, "--ex-brother, you're not to hex students in the corridors. Particularly younger students."

Sirius flipped back his hair, oozing charm as well as Bellatrix, though in a more masculine style. "Aw, Professor, Regulus isn't stupid. He could have easily blocked a Stinging Hex."

"Oh, is that what it was? There was no incantation. I daren't ask why you've done that hex so often you needn't say aloud anymore. My office, 8:00 tonight."

Sirius rolled his eyes, but was soon on his way, flanked by his three friends, laughing as petulantly and cheekily as ever.

Spiteful, and having no way to retaliate on Sirius, I attacked the defenseless one. It was Sirius's mistake for having treated me cruelly in response to my kindness to him.

_Dear Mummy,_

_Andromeda has been associating with a boy for some time. I don't know who he is, or what his bloodline may be. She seems to be getting rather serious, and the relationship comes off as romantic. I thought you might want to know._

_-Regulus, 4th Year Slytherin_

I told Narcissa about my observation, and she began to watch, too. One day at dinner, side-by-side and whispering in a fashion we had never executed before, usually surrounded by our own crowd of friends, she confided in me the worst suspicion:

"The boy's name is Theodore Tonks," she whispered to me at dinner one day. "I asked Avery; he's in their Herbology class. He's Muggle-born."

Her words fell bluntly on my ears. "Muggle-born? Is Andromeda crazy?"

Narcissa's dark eyes were wide with fear, and she swept a stray curl of fair hair away from her light pink cheeks. "We have to tell her to stop, right away, or we're going to have to take care of Tonks somehow."

"Do you think he could be controlling her? What if he's using a love potion?" I cried hysterically. "He's corrupting our line!"

Narcissa licked her lips. "Andromeda's always believed in true love; she's always loved fairy tales like that. She's a hopeless romantic. She probably thinks she's fallen for him."

"So she is under some sort of spell!"

"Love can be like Imperius, I've heard," Narcissa said wisely. "Either way, we must remedy her of this, before Mother finds out."

I felt my heart give a painful jerk. "I already told my mummy . . . " I said slowly.

Narcissa breathed out. "Oh . . . Regulus . . . you didn't . . . "

I didn't reply, but only kept looking at her.

She shook her head. "It's her own fault, allowing herself to consort with that boy. She can exercise more self-control than that." She looked up at me painfully. "As Bellatrix would say, we're weeding out the bad blood."

As it turns out, we were too late anyway. Narcissa met me in similar circumstances in mid-November. She had noticed that her sister's belly was bulging.

Andromeda was pregnant.

I dreaded going home for Christmas holiday and discovering the repercussions of my letters home. As it was, Narcissa had written home about the second circumstance-- for her it finalized that Andromeda was beyond salvation.

Andromeda was cheery as Uncle Alphard picked us up from the station-- I remembered the last time he had been delegated for the task-- chatting about how she could have Apparated but preferred to walk, as it was her last time coming home for Christmas. She meant it as in the context of school, but it was so ironic how true it was.

Narcissa and I scampered in the door first, trying to get in before Andromeda was seen. We made it, but did not even have time to take our scarves off as the girl came in. Uncle Alphard, who had been silent the entire walk, took a place beside her in the foyer, waiting, watching, all in quiet sympathy.

Mummy, Father, and Aunt Elladora charged in. Andromeda smiled at all of them. She was remarkably pretty and charming when standing on her own, the simplicity of her straight brown hair, warm brown eyes, and kind smile always overshadowed by her sisters.

Her warm smile, however, faded into wide-eyed and hysterical shock as Aunt Elladora seized her shoulders and pushed her further in, where Mummy tossed aside her Ravenclaw scarf, pulled open her black coat, seized the front of her Hogwarts uniform shirt, and yanked it upward. Andromeda was in shock and went to cover herself, but her mother's hands slid down her arms and held them fast to her. Her bare belly was revealed, a healthy peach-fleshed bulge just below her plain white bra, the bottom of which was visible.

Andromeda knew exactly what they were looking at. "It's fat! I'm getting fat! I've been overeating because of the pressure of NEWTs! I confess it! I'm sorry! I know it looks bad!" she cried, desperately lying as best she could. Yet the bulge of her belly was too spherical and firm to be fat.

"Hush!" Father shouted, the only useful thing he could do from the few feet he stood behind Mummy. His eyes were focused unblinkingly at Andromeda's middle.

"Stop it! Stop looking it me!" Andromeda cried, tears leaking out between her eyelids. She turned her pallid face towards Narcissa and I and opened her mouth in a primal cry of desperation. She still could not move, but still struggled. Mummy pulled her shirt open, so that even when the tails were dropped her belly was visible. Andromeda groaned and tried to lean away, to no avail. As far as she was concerned she was being raped, her clothing torn apart by her aunt and her body ravaged by her relations. "Why are you doing this?" she moaned, the tears now streaming down her pretty face. I heard Uncle Alphard's throat constrict behind me.

Mummy held no pity in her eyes. "You don't like this?" she asked scathingly. "You don't mind filthy Mudbloods doing it to you, though, do you?" In reiteration she pulled her shirt the rest of the way open, popping two buttons off. Andromeda screamed, her bra and pregant belly now fully visible to everyone in the hall. I felt a guilty flush run through me; it was my fault this was happening. Yet Andromeda deserved it; she dared to stand before us with the child of a Muggle-born inside her. I kept repeating it to myself in my head, though it was so hard with my cousin screaming piteously in my ears.

Mummy seized Andromeda's shoulders from the front and hurled her towards the wall. Narcissa and I slid further down it, avoiding the encounter. She held her fast against it, pressing her nails into her flesh. Andromeda cried out, squirming.

"You let that filthy boy plant his seed in you!" Mummy shouted right into Andromeda's face, her eyes boring right where Andromeda's would be if they were open. "You were not raped; you let him! You filthy girl!" Her hand flew up from Andromeda's arm and smashed her across her face. Andromeda still did not dare open her eyes, but recoiled, shivering under Mummy's grasp. "You allowed your blood corrupted, you shamed the family with your relations before marriage! Have you no girlish shame? Have you no sense of your bloodline? You shameful, disgusting, repulsive harlot! Tramp, slut, abomination!" Another slap followed, and this time I averted my eyes.

Mummy let go and Andromeda crumpled to the floor. Mummy stood over her and whipped out her wand. Aunt Elladora was breathing heavily behind her, backing her but passively. I could hear Uncle Alphard's raspy breathing intermingled with Narcissa's shallow respiration. Father stood coldly by the wall, watching. This was women's business.

The wand traced down to Andromeda's face, at ready. Andromeda, however, turned her face up just in time, revealing from within her coat her own wand. Her eyes set cooly on Mummy's.

Mummy started to say an incantation, but Andromeda shrieked "Protego!" and whatever it was came back. Mummy screamed and whipped her wand backwards again. However, by the time she had recovered, Andromeda had gotten to her feet, her wand aimed between her aunt's eyes, her own eyes bright though she quaked with fear.

"Don't touch me," she commanded, trembling. "Keep away from me . . . you . . . "

"The harlot defends her actions," Mummy observed, staring hard at her. "She feels no remorse. She is proud!"

Aunt Elladora bit her lip and turned her eyes away from her daughter.

"No corruption shall stand under the name of Black," Mummy said firmly. "Stains on the family must be cleaned. Scourgify!"

She held her wand in the direction of Andromeda's mouth, not relenting and lifting upward as was usual with the wand motion. Soap suds kept pouring out between my cousin's lips, choking her as long as the wand was held. She raised her wandless hand to try to scrape it away, to keep from gagging. She coughed and spat, spluttering and thoroughly unable to retaliate.

She fell to her knees again, but, when the soap was gone, raised her face and wand, and started to curse my mother back-- but Mummy was too fast. "Impedimentia!" she cried. Andromeda collapsed again.

Mummy observed her coldly for a moment, Andromeda's eyes staring up at her in fear. "Bring her," she commanded. She turned for the stairs, but Aunt Elladora and Uncle Alphard rushed forward and each took an arm of their daughter, lifting her after Mummy.

Narcissa and I followed as if in a trance. We were still coated and scarved, but there was no question.

Andromeda was dragged into the grand tapestry room. Mummy marched right up the giant family tree, where the mark of Sirius was still newly charred black. She scanned the bottom of the tree, and I could see as clearly as she that Narcissa's name had been shifted over a bit to make room for the name "Theodore Tonks," connected by a double dotted line to "Andromeda Black"-- and already there was a perpendicular sprout beneath, leading to an unnamed child.

"I should have noticed," Mummy spat. "No name such as that shall dirty our family."

She pointed her wand towards Andromeda's name. The curse had worn off on Andromeda, and she moaned, struggling against her father, who had wrapped his arms completely around her, holding her back. His face was in deep pain that his squirming daughter could not see-- though her kicks and elbowings did not appear to affect him.

A brief flash of green light shot out of Mummy's wand, and Andromeda's name burned black, smoking for a moment. Instantly, "Theodore Tonks" and all connections were vanished.

Andromeda screamed one last time, but then shrunk back, collapsing against her father, panting. She turned around and pressed her face into his winter coat. Uncle Alphard stroked her hair.

"Comfort or pity not that wretched creature!" Mummy strode over and ripped Andromeda away from him. Andromeda turned back on her, wand raised.

"Andromeda, don't!" her father warned fearfully.

"I will!" she shouted, her eyes still on Mummy. "You hateful woman! I love him! I love the child! You have no understanding of that, do you? I love him, and I'll go to him, and we'll be happier without you, and you can all just suffer and be miserable and--"

"Proud of your fate?" Mummy's eyes popped further. "So be it. Out. Out of this house. No corruption of wizard blood will live to infect our line. No longer a Black are you!" She pointed to the door. When Andromeda only stared at her, exposed chest rising and falling quickly, she seized the girl by the scruff of her neck and dragged her.

Once again, we all followed, back to the foyer. Mummy yanked open the door and flung Andromeda out. It was all the girl could do to remain on her own two feet. She stood there in the cold, blowing snow, her face-- particuarly her nose-- red, her hair tousled, one of her eyes blackened, and her shirt ripped open, tie flapping and pregnant belly quivering in the chilled December breeze. She was a piteable figure. Then, just as Mummy went to slam the door before her, Andromeda disappeared with a pop.

"Apparated to that scum of a wizard's house, no doubt," Mummy spat. "May she be miserable with him. That is all she is doomed for."

Aunt Elladora sucked in a deep breath. Uncle Alphard was perfectly still. I realized for the first time that the two of them had had absolutely no say in the fate of their daughter. Even Father, the true patriarch, had stood by. It was all Mummy's doing-- just as it had been with Sirius's disowning.


	8. Traversion

_I do not own Harry Potter._

"You all disgust me!" Uncle Alphard suddenly cried, breaking the pregnant silence in the hallway.

Everyone looked at him. Uncle Alphard was shaking, madder than I had ever seen him. "You . . . you . . . you just kicked out my daughter!"

Mummy snarled, renewing the anger that had just recently melted into spiteful calm, "She allowed that scum to corrupt her--"

"She was in love!" Uncle Alphard cried. "If she was willing to carry his child of her own free will . . . just because you don't approve of his bloodline! You don't even know him! I'm sure any boy that my daughter could love so wholly would receive my blessing, regardless of his bloodline!"

"Control yourself, Alphard," Father barked, growing stern.

"You haven't been in a different House than your family; you don't know what it's like to hear different points of view. You wallow in the same old traditions, destroying yourself in them! You have no respect for what might be out there! Andromeda did, Sirius did . . . I did, I just let myself fall back into this rotten conservatism! And, Merlin, how jealous I am that the two of them-- both of them-- had the strength to leave it! You--" he pointed to Aunt Elladora, whose eyes were wide, "-- you have never loved me, I was just the younger son of a fine line, the best the third daughter of a second son could have, and my being a Ravenclaw was just something you would put up with for the bloodline." He pointed to my parents, "You two certainly don't love each other. You've got a precious little collusion going on-- two Dark minds combined as one-- but minds alone! No heart!" He began to wave his hands, "Bella only married Rodolphus because it was convenient. Narcissa doesn't give a damn about anybody, Regulus has never loved anyone; they don't even care that their sister and brother are forever removed from their lives, look at them!" He glared at Narcissa and I that I felt my blood run cold; he carried some of Father's genes.

"Andromeda loved me!" Uncle Alphard cried desperately. "Andromeda loved that boy! She was capable of it; she indulged in it. And I have no doubt that if Sirius had ever been showed love-- not privilege, not birthright, not punishment-- he wouldn't have been half so eager to leave. And now . . . now, dammit," his eyes filled with tears, "you've taken away from me the only people who have ever loved me! Narcissa and Bellatrix never gave a damn about me. Ella, you never cared, either.

"I pity Andromeda because I understand what is like to be Sorted Ravenclaw in a Slytherin family-- and I pity Sirius because I know what it is like to be alone in a House. No . . . no, I don't pity them. I respect them. They are strong. And they are lucky. Sirius has great friends; they took him in and gave him a better home than he knew here. He'll go on to do great things he never could have dreamed of here. Andromeda, she'll find love with this boy, she'll marry this boy, and she'll be HAPPY. She'll have a family based in love, not blood! Me . . . it's too late for me, for I sat back and allowed my family to force me into their own ways, never daring to break free and achieve what I really wanted! And now, my only comforts gone, I have nothing left to live for! For you, Cissa? You, Ella? You give me no fulfillment."

He took out his wand and held it up resolutely. "You left those most important to me absolutely nothing. They deserve more than that. I leave," he took a deep breath, "half my estate to Andromeda, half to Sirius." A small white puff emitted from his wand and wisped away into the nearest fireplace, as if Flooing to his estate. "Ella, you can live off my brother; Merlin knows they have enough for you. Narcissa, you'll be fine; you'll marry into a high family. That's all you've ever wanted, isn't it?"

He raised his wand to his head, pointing it directly to his temple as if saluting. I felt the breath leave me. Narcissa's face was so pale it was translucent. Only Aunt Elladora was audible; she gasped.

He took one last look around at all of us. "Oh, you don't care. As soon as I'm gone, you'll forget I ever lived, that I was ever in the family, just as you did with Andromeda and Sirius. AVADA KEDAVRA!"

There was a blinding flash of green light; I turned my eyes away. Alphard's body fell rigidly to the floor. Aunt Elladora screamed. Mummy, however, alighted with madness.

"So that's where the corruption comes from. That's the seat of our problems," she drew in a great heaving breath and jerked her head up. "Is that all? Is there anyone else who would like to come forward to renounce their pure blood? I'm only making one more trip upstairs!"

"Oh, don't!" Aunt Elladora cried. "Not my husband! Your husband's brother! Please! The shame!"

"Better out than in, Ella. This man just disparaged you and left you nothing! He does not deserve this!" She seemed to be swelling with an inexpressible anger. "Blood traitors . . . deep-rooted subversion . . . filth . . . degenerate minds of purest blood . . . " she puffed out insults like the Hogwarts Express did steam. Finally, she turned and dashed back into the trophy with the speed of one ready to vomit.

When Narcissa and Aunt Elladora went to go home, they found their Floo entrance blocked; their house had disappeared, vanished into gold in Sirius's and Andromeda's accounts, no doubt. Narcissa, for the first time in her life, showed emotion. She screamed at the loss of her possessions, all the dresses in her closet, her lacy bedspread, her vanity and mirror. She screamed, too, for her lost father-- but, it seemed, that was an afterthought. Aunt Elladora consoled her, promising her that my father would be sure to buy her plenty new dresses.

Narcissa moved into Sirius's room. It gave me a terrible itch to know she was in there. The empty room had not bothered me, but what if I woke up in the middle of the night, in an uncontrolled sleepwalk, and revealed my assistance in Sirius's flight? I could tell when Narcissa was awake, just as I had with Sirius, but it was different, wrong. She wasn't meant to be in his room.

The rumors spread like wildfire as school started again in January. No one had suspected Andromeda as a point of subversion in our family. It was all hushed up about Uncle Alphard, of course; he had died of a heart attack. Yet Andromeda was living, breathing, pregnant proof of what she had done. She was married to the Tonks boy by February, her belly bulging more than ever.

Narcissa and I were forced to bear the shame of this, but our companions were sympathetic. "Tonks corrupted her. She was only a young girl; it was our duty to defend her from the prying Muggle-borns, always ready to destroy our pure womenhood," Rabastan had comforted me. "You were her cousin, but I was her brother in-law's brother, and I did nothing, either. It's too bad she had no choice in the matter; we could have taken care of Tonks and brought her back."

I held my tongue that she had wanted to go.

Narcissa seemed to deal very poorly with this. She had been fond of Andromeda, just as fond as she was of Bellatrix. "You always properly hated Sirius," she said to me, which wasn't true but she of course didn't know. "You're lucky for that. Andromeda . . . I can't help feeling like I should have been able to save her."

Her emotional instability led her into Lucius Malfoy's comfort, who consoled her with compliments of her superiority, her beauty, her purity, and a promise that she would never fall into such a way as her wayward cousin. I suspected for a time that Narcissa might even have been taking things further than her modesty would formally have permitted-- in essence, going the way of Andromeda though with a purer vessel. Luckily for her, though, she had no such tangible evidence as Andromeda did.

Now that another generation had graduated, the meetings between us became more and more defined as actual meetings. It was not common room chat anymore, nor was it Hog's Head meeting. Our gatherings were events. We met, black-cloaked and silent, secretly within the Forbidden Forest. Those that knew how to Apparate helped the others. Barty and I, still the youngest, were constantly being assisted, unable to even perform magic at the gatherings for fear of being detected for Underage Wizardry.

Yet our cause was growing. Augustus Rookwood had landed a job at the Ministry, working his way up through by working his pureblood privilege with those who took it-- and a little bit of blackmail by Lucius Malfoy, whose father had connections, knew the worst secrets of everyone, and allowed his son free access of it. None of us had any true need to work, we were only doing society a service. Bellatrix spent her days at the Lestrange manor, but, from the way Rodolphus told it, she was anything but a housewife. There was no sign of a child a year into their marriage, and, the Lestrange parents still alive, there was little for Bellatrix to do anyway. So she and her husband spent their days freely wreaking havoc wherever they wanted: influencing the Ministry with the Lestrange's endless supply of money and power, assisting Lucius in digging up information (which Bellatrix found frightfull boring), and even arranging subtle underground campaigns to recruit more members. There was a large movement growing in the Transylvanian regions, as well, prompted by a similar crackdown on the Dark Arts that were even more prominant there, and Bellatrix found Igor Karkaroff, a Bulgarian living in England, to serve as a connection to Lord Voldemort for his people.

Barty, however, had other ideas about how my grown cousin could be spending her time.

"Do you think it's unhealthy to still be infatuated with a married woman?" he asked me hesitantly one day. "I didn't want to try anything before she was married, because that's not how things work, but now that she's married . . . if Rodolphus didn't know . . . "

I couldn't help it; I smashed him soundly across the face. He drew back, gasping raggedly. "Great Circe's girdle! Ouch, Regulus!"

"Don't talk that way about my cousin."

Barty blushed furiously. "Dammit, Regulus! Half the reason I joined . . . " he spluttered. "You know something?" he breathed in deeply. "I never had a chance with her, ever. Because your family frowns on mine. You know why they frown on me? Because my dad's a filthy bloodtraitor. I didn't choose him to be that way, but he is . . . he's shamed the entire family, our entire pure bloodline, to the point that we're as low as halfblood and Muggle-borns. That's shot everything for me." He was shaking with anger.

"Barty, I can't help you with Bellatrix, but if you move with the Dark Lord, you're bound to get some glory back to your name. He's going to resurrect the Snape family again, too."

Barty sighed. "I still can't help what I feel."

"Loving isn't exactly part of our culture," I teased. "Perhaps you are a lower line."

Barty locked his arm around my neck, wrestling me, but playfully. "Haven't you ever got any of those urges?"

"No," I said, wrestling him back. We fell laughing to the floor. It was partially true; I was much better than Barty was, apparently, at suppressing those feelings. I knew I would have a wife eventually; I just had to wait until my parents arranged one for me.

Yet part of me wondered if Bellatrix was as pure as I thought, in my mind that ever-glorified my family. She seemed very, very attached to the Dark Lord, who reciprocated it clearly, calling her to his side even more often that Lucius Malfoy or Rodolphus Lestrange, the two other founders. It clearly made Barty even more jealous.

He began to become particularly involved in the cause as if showing off for Bellatrix. The Dark Lord suggested that the younger members be drilled in various curses and hexes to ensure our power, and Barty, taught by Bellatrix everything from the Stinging Hex to the Cruciatus, was a particularly avid student.

Andromeda's baby was born at the end of my 4th year, just before her graduation. She started going into labor during her Divination exam-- which she passed by announcing she was going to have a baby, and, seconds later, breaking her water. I felt for the first time the true separation of us. I had always assumed I would be present when one of my cousins had their first baby, but I was not even invited to the humble hospital birth of Nymphadora Tonks. I didn't even know her name until Rabastan got a Quidditch injury and he could emerge with the news.

"She's a Metamorphagus," he told me. "I didn't see, but I heard a bunch of her friends going on and on about it. Apparently the kid was born looking like Andromeda and about ten seconds later had transformed into a girl version of Tonks. It's crazy."

I was bitten with jealously; Metamorphagi were rare, and we actually had one in our family-- but she would never be considered a Black. How ironic it was that the purest marriage resulted in no such luck.

Yet I allowed Andromeda to pass from my mind. She left the school as Mrs. Tonks, wife and mother, and no cousin of mine. I never saw her again.

Besides, I had much greater things on my mind. Just before 5th year, when I should have been assigned prefect or Quidditch captain and been ready to start studying for my OWLs, I joined into a much greater organization.


	9. Revolution

_I do not own Harry Potter._

Our little gathering finally was named. We were the Death Eaters, an elite underground radically conservative group trained to take-- not lobby for, not work for, not write for-- back our elite standing in wizard society. The summer we were initiated, Bellatrix invited me to the Lestrange mansion. "Your parents have a wariness for the radical," she explained. "They don't seem to understand that in order to make a movement, we have to act, not just sit around complaining. Hence, you will join without them knowing-- or at least knowing the full story."

That planted quite a bit of guilt in me. I was doing this for the glorification of my family, and yet I had to keep it quiet. It was a discrepancy, just like so much else. I was realizing there were several tears in our way of life. We glorified family and the right of pure blood, but those in our family that did not match our mindset were discarded. Those with pure blood but not the right mindset were bloodtraitors. It was slightly paradoxical; to be pure, one needed both pure blood and pure mind-- a lacking of either was inferiority. Yet the Dark Lord was so convincing, so passionate, and so powerful that I knew all I needed to worry about was keeping my pure mind. I would be fine.

The initiation was in the woods, once again. No names were called; we were summoned by light, lest one should betray us.

A cloaked figure with bits of blond hair sliding out of his hood, making it obvious to me that he was Lucius, approached first, knelt, and kissed the hem of his master's skirt. The Dark Lord bid rim rise, raise both of his hands so that the bare arms were exposed to the elbows, and give the oath of loyalty and secrecy. Then he drew out one white finger and laid it on Lucius's left inner forearm. Lucius flinched and let out a gasp of pain. A black scar appeared there for a moment, and then faded. He fell back into the circle, clutching his arm and bowing, murmuring pained thank-yous. I felt my apprehension-- but also my excitement-- grow.

The light drew forward again, bringing forward one who was obviously female-- the only female in our number. Bellatrix hastened to his side, her robes flowing over her quick steps. She gave a short scream when he touched her, and tipped her head back, falling against him. At first I thought she had fainted, but the Dark Lord ordered her upright, and she obeyed, backing away but with a much less inclined head than Lucius. I felt proud of her, the proudest of them all.

The light drew forward over and over, and I had trouble telling everyone apart. Barty was nervous when he went, shaking and whimpering loudly when he was touched.

I followed him immediately after. I could feel my heart pounding against my chest, the wind of the breeze within my cloak blowing about my legs, chilling them thought it was a summer evening. The Dark Lord radiated cold. I kept my eyes averted, and when I saw his cloak appear before me, I dropped to my knees, stunned by the power around the man-- no, more than a man-- that made my head throb, and pressed my lips to the rough hem against the ground. I had never kissed anything with such fervor in my life. Yet, who more than the Dark Lord deserved it?

I rose as I was bid, and raised my arms. They looked small, skinny, and pallid white before me. The white finger, however, was even paler, so pale it was translucent, nearly blue, yet veinless. It touched my skin, and I felt a burn that ripped all the way through me. I don't know what noise I made; I was out of myself.

The next thing I knew, I was bowing away, slipping back into the circle, cold tears in my eyes. I was part of the circle, initiated forever. I could see my future before me, the future of all wizard society, perfect under the rule of the Dark Lord

The Dark Lord was becoming well-known. Since the day we had met in the Forbidden Forest for the first time, his name had steadily gained more power. In fact, the shudders we had felt hearing it had only intensified. We could not speak the name, and drowned it out when it was spoken with a terrible hiss.

The regular people could not stand it, either. With the name Lord Voldemort came visions of destruction, torture, and death. The papers spared the people the name, referring to him only as "You Know Who" or the more respectful "He Who Must Not Be Named."

It became clear exactly what Bellatrix and Rodolphus had been up to in their spare time. As minions of the Dark Lord, they appeared to our enemies-- the blood traitors, the liberal Ministry workers, the Muggle-borns and halfbloods that had become too well-off for their own good-- cloaked, hooded, and masked, demanding that they bend to their wills of new policies, convert to the cause, or even flee the country. Bellatrix smiled with a terrible gleam in her eye when she recalled her first murder-- a Muggle-born who, like Ted, had corrupted a pureblood girl. "We'll get Tonks, too . . . when I find where she is. And you will soon have a chance to try your hand yourself. You haven't tasted the true fight, yet, Regulus. It's delicious."

I was now exactly where I wanted to be. Bellatrix regarded me as an equal, one of comparable philosophy and of course elite family. She often bounced her ideas off me first, and I found I was excellent at coughing up facts to corroborate the gut feelings she lived by. I spent many free hours in the library, searching for key points-- since I still had access. Since I excelled at Defense Against the Dark Arts-- ironically due to my training in the Dark Arts-- I was given exceptional permission for many of the Restricted books, even as a pre-OWL fifth year. These were remarkably useful in providing new skills that would come in handy with my later practical missions for the Dark Lord.

Father and Mummy only knew of my paperwork. They praised me for my interest in politics, stating that I would be the next Minister-- "and a bloody right good one," according to Father-- and had a certain knack for history and proof. Even the stories of my childhood, applied historically, became propaganda in my hands.

"We're so proud of you," Mummy said quite often. "You've become more than we had ever hoped--" she would choke out the word, "Sirius-- would be." Father did not compliment me as often. He still stung at his failure to rectify Sirius. I knew Mummy's over-hatred of Sirius and over-love of me was only a defense, too. She had loved Sirius-- or at least valued him, if what Uncle Alphard had said was true-- but he had hurt her. Hence, she cut off the feeling with hate. I knew it quite clearly, but I allowed myself quite satisfactorily to enjoy the attention and pretend it was sincere.

I also was coming into society. Balls came and went, and I was always invited. I never paid particular attention to the girls, only the attention accompanying them.

"What's this one's name?" I asked Mummy as she adjusted my collar before Flooing to some gala at the Notts'. I had been directed to dance and consort with one particular girl, as was common now that I was reaching my later teens. I might be married by the time I was eighteen.

"Travers," she said shortly. She never bothered to tell me the first names; that wasn't important. "Now, Kreacher, be sure to keep the parlor tidy, in case Regulus decides to bring this one home for coffee afterward." She spoke to the elf with a curious baby voice that rather echoed Bellatrix's mocking tones. She leaned over and kissed Kreacher on the snout, and the elf crinkled it and went off with what I swore was a blush. Mummy had grown rather fond-- a bit disturbingly so-- of him since I had started the courting rites. I supposed she was lonely, her son on his way out in the world-- and, after all, Father never kissed her. He never had-- at least not in front of me.

I spent the evening with various girls, remembering them for various trifles. One had dark red hair and green eyes-- very pretty-- but was too sharp-tongued and suspicious. Another was blond, like Narcissa, and thoroughly overinterested in the girlish gossip I could never tolerate. Mummy reminded me that I wouldn't have to deal with it in the house once I was married. There was only one girl whom I decided I would outright refuse to marry-- she had the typical Slytherinian dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin, but her mind was particularly bloodtraitorous, as she told me it was a pity I wasn't as handsome as my brother.

"EX-brother," I told her.

"Still brother, by blood," she had insisted cooly. "If Mother allowed me, I'd sooner marry him, heir or not."

I told Bellatrix about her, and she assured me that the girl was corrupted. After Christmas holiday, upon return to school, I noticed that she avoided my eyes at all costs. Bellatrix bragged of a frightening little mission she had taken with Rodolphus in the night.

The meetings became darker and darker. We were summoned by means of the mark on our arms, which we kept hidden at all times. We arrived, cloaked, to our every meeting-- oftentimes though with the aid of an older, registered wizard, as members like Barty and I had difficulty performing magic outside school hours.

"Lucius is in the process of revoking that law," Bellatrix consoled me. "Unfortunately, bribing didn't work, and now we're going to have to try other, erm, methods of persuasion," she grinned. "In fact, you're welcome to attend. It's high time you were given the chance to prove yourself on the battlefield."

Yet the battlefield was becoming rougher and rougher terrain. In the beginning, the fighting Death Eaters were the only ones in their league. No one could stop our reign of terror or do battle with our terrible Dark Arts. We were undefeated.

Yet there was an opposition growing. They called themselves the Order, and were headed by Dumbledore himself. I had to trod more lightly than ever around the school, as he was the enemy now. I wished I could break free, but, after all, I was needed as the inside source. I kept the Death Eaters updated about when he was leaving, where his weaknesses were, even which teachers were reliable sources to seek information through. As I was soon to be graduating, Severus Snape made the suggestion he seek a job as a professor under the man to continue to usefulness of Hogwarts infiltration.

Of course, the new clash created many more deaths. At first, it was all the Order, the weak opposition that was poorly organized. They did not know whom they were working with. Bellatrix, who had once only had to torture to get what she wanted, now found she was in conflict with men just as devoted to their cause as she was to hers-- and that meant a fight to the death. Yet the names of those we killed astounded me. Travers told me how he killed Marlene McKinnon's entire family, and I brought to mind the girl with copper-colored hair and freckles who had been a Gryffindor prefect in her day. Dorcas Meadowes had been a Head Girl from Hufflepuff, and she had always been a radical advocate for peaceful Wizard-Muggle relations. Benjy Fenwick was on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team; he had fallen unconscious in a game when, as Keeper, he was struck in the head with two Bludgers at once. These were all old students, people I knew. I had never considered them particularly horrible. Inferior, perhaps, but never the enemy. Yet now here they were, dying for it.


	10. Initiation

_I do not own Harry Potter._

Sirius graduated at the end of my 5th year. His NEWT scores were decent and he was second in his class, only to James Potter. Yet, for the first time, I found myself completely empty of his presence. He graduated, but, unlike Bellatrix, I would never see him again. I had spent the past two years watching him from a distance, just seeing what happened to him. He and his friends had remained as tight as ever, and there seemed to be more color in Sirius's characteristically pale face. He was healthy, and happy. He flirted, never seriously, flipping his hair around and winking at girls, always with an arm around one of his friends. It was pure carelessness. While I diligently prepared for my future-- even the entire future of the wizarding world-- he didn't have a care. I had heard rumors of a flying motorbike and an apartment-- no doubt the fruits of Uncle Alphard's inheritance-- and even saw the bike the afternoon of commencement when he gave James and the red-haired girl I knew as the Head Girl around the lake, after James Potter apparently proposed her. I knew she was a Muggle-born, but, then again, Potter had turned out to be a pretty inferior pureblood.

It didn't seem to bother him that we were never going to be seeing each other again. Of course, that was probably my own fault.

I had plenty on my plate as it was. Narcissa was preparing for her final year at Hogwarts, including an official engagement with Lucius Malfoy. I had received my OWL marks, with the best scores in History of Magic and Defense Against the Dark Arts. I decided to take the NEWT courses in both-- though I was one of only three in the NEWT History course-- as well as Charms and Transfiguration, considering most important in my field. Bartemius took an unprecedented action for a Slytherin-- Muggle Studies.

"My father was getting suspicious," he defended. "He forced me to take that class in the first place, and it was easy as anything. Besides," he shrugged, trying assuage his disappointment, "know your enemy."

That summer, the real war started breaking out. Barty's father, appointed in charge of this defense, actually gave a speech demanding the capture and arrest of all suspected Death Eaters. "We need names!" he demanded. "Capture them, and bring them in, and we will have them stamped out! All in Azkaban!"

I warned Barty that he might consider moving out of the house.

It came to light at the wrong time many of the Death Eaters' actions, that Mulciber had used Imperius, that Travers had murdered, and that Malfoy had been blackmailing Ministry workers to succomb to his wills. They were still young, only a few years out of school, but Crouch cracked down on those he had proof for. Lucius, had, for one, been attempting to force through a Ministry bill allowing underage magic in approved pureblood families. He had succeeded, but that left obvious tracks. He was brought before the Wizengamot.

"There's only one way to get him out of it," Bella said. "They wouldn't take bribes-- that's usually Lucius's best backplan."

So a team of neophytes-- those as of yet unsuspected-- were gathered. It included the newly graduated Severus Snape and Rabastan Lestrange, and Barty Crouch and I. The more practiced Death Eaters could not embark on this mission, lest it risk failure and unmask all of them.

"You will need to break into the home of the prosecutor Edgar Bones. He's a member of the Order and is known to have a very strong case against Lucius," Rodolphus explained to us. "Remember what Bella, Lucius, and I have taught you."

"Be sure to make very clear your stance," added Bella. "This is as much as warning as a murder mission. You're killing Bones as distraction from the case, as a warning to all those who may also try to hinder our movement, and to lessen the strength and power of the Order."

"Regulus, Barty . . . you two may use as much magic as you like," Rodolphus continued instructing cooly, "as Lucius is in hot water for giving that power to you and it would be foolish not to thank him. Yet, though I know you are capable, do NOT use any of the Unforgivable curses. Leave the actually killing to Severus and Rabastan. You may stun, hex, jinx, curse, even modify the memories of any of the others, to keep them out of the way. Yet leave Edgar Bones to the other two."

We went off, into the night, unable to Apparate or even Floo. The Boneses were still a large, influential family, so this was quite risky. We approached their manor, where Bones, still only in his early twenties himself, lived with his parents, sister, young wife, son, and baby daughter. The house was not protected in any fashion, unlike my home, whose Unplottability and Fidelius Charm-lock (only members of the family knew the address as 12 Grimmauld Place) I had grown accustomed to. We positioned ourselves at various windows. It was pitch black out, the summer evening cool, the new moon casting no light on the ground. Severus gave the signal, and the four of us stormed the manor.

I crawled in through my window, after unlocking it with Alohomora. I had charmed myself to hide my tracks and fingerprints. I found myself in what at first I thought was an abandoned bedroom, but then I realized someone was in fact asleep. They heard my footsteps and sat up with a gasp. It was Edgar's unmarried sister, Amelia, who had just graduated from Hogwarts with Severus and Rabastan and was studying to be a judge.

"Stupefy!" I cried immediately into the darkness, before she could light her wand and see me. I heard the heaviness of her falling back on her pillow. That silenced, I could make out screams on the other side of the house. I hastened to the doorway and down the halls and corridors, following the noise and scuffle, my heart pounding in my chest.

"Edgar! Behind you! There's two!" the shrill voice of a woman cried.

"Protect the kids!" a man's voice fired back. "Go to Susan and--"

"Avada Kedavra!" Rabastan's voice was clear. I heard a masculine groan cut off Edgar's speech, followed by the clear sound of a body slumping to the floor.

I came dashing into the room in time to see Severus chasing a woman into yet another dark room.

"You! Go help him! That woman's armed!" Rabastan cried, standing over Edgar Bones's body, unsure of which other Death Eater I was. As I whirled around the corner, in after Severus, I saw him raise his wand and send the Dark Mark into the air above his body.

The room into which I had run was completely black again, unlike the lamplit room of Edgar's final moments. I could not see for several seconds; I could only hear the frightened cries of a small child, a boy, and a shrieking baby.

Severus's low voice was calm and clear, "Avada Kedavra!" he said. There was a flash of green light that ignited the room for only a second, and the older child fell silent.

I held my breath, wishing I could see. The baby cried on, but the mother, no doubt finally aware of her child's death, paused a moment before shrieking in pure animal terror.

"Damn," I heard Severus whisper under his breath. He had hit the wrong one, an error in the darkness. Then his wand tip lit up, and I could see all in its faint light: the mother standing over a bed upon which lay the motionless body of a small boy who was not asleep, and the crib in the corner of the room from where the baby fretted terribly. The mother, however, could see us now, too. Her wide, wild eyes scanned over the two dark figures descending on her, illuminated by the faintest light. We would be the last thing she ever saw . . .

"Nox." The light went out. "Avada Kedavra!"

The room was once again doused in green light, and there was the sound of a falling corpse. The baby shrieked on.

This time, both Severus and I lit our wands. We both looked to the cradle and then back at each other, meeting each other's eyes. We did not need to kill the baby.

Severus, however, silenced her screams with a simple noise reduction charm. I knew that back in the other room, Amelia would wake eventually, find her, and bring her out of the house of her dead parents. Susan, was the baby's name, I recalled.

Barty came rushing in from where his post had been. "You got them?" he asked. "I couldn't even find the parents."

"We got them," Severus said bitterly. "Our murder turned into more of a massacre."

Rabastan came in. "We'd better scarper. I've left a message and the Dark Mark; we needn't leave ourselves as evidence. Out the way we came, you reckon?"

We climbed out through the window and rushed back to our homes in opposite directions, never speaking, never stopping. My heart never stopped racing. Mrs. Bones's cries still lingered in my ears.

I had performed my first true act as a Death Eater.


	11. Permission

_I do not own Harry Potter._

I was still on call for battle as the schoolyear went on. The Edgar Bones murder only created more hatred of our organization. We had murdered his family-- his wife and son-- in cold blood, and his poor orphaned daughter Susan was pitied and held up on a pedestal as a symbol of the broken families Lord Voldemort's rule would create.

"Ignorant fools," I had spat when I saw the article explaining it in the Daily Prophet. "Our cause is to glorify the role of family. Pure family."

"Bella said it's not that simple," said Barty, his mouth full of a particularly heavily-buttered piece of toast. "It takes purity of mind and loyalty to cause as well as purity of and loyalty to blood to be a Death Eater."

"Oh, so are you allowed to call her Bella now?"

Barty grinned, leaking butter down his chin.

Barty's father went haywire. "AURORS GIVEN LICENSE TO KILL" was the headline the next day. Mr. Crouch was becoming radically opposed to us, as radically as we were opposed to him. It made Barty laugh. The army of the opposition, an official army of Aurors in the Order, were composed of strong people, including the revered Alastor Moody and Albus Dumbledore himself-- but also some smaller names I recognized from school. James Potter, Sirius's messed-haired friend, hero of the Quidditch pitch, now an Auror. Lily Evans, the Muggle-born girl Head Girl Sirius had talked about his first Christmas home, now Jame's wife, also an Auror. Remus Lupin, the boy who always looked weary and intimidated, now involved in research. Peter Pettigrew, the fat, worthless, sniggering one . . . involved somehow.

Sirius Black. Not an Auror, but an avid part of the opposition nonetheless.

The war was all-out now. No civilian stood safe. However, instead of the brutal, overt killings we had previously partaken in, things began to grow a little more silent. Caradoc Dearborn's body was hidden; the Order spent months tracking it. Warning missions were not performed by the men in cloaks, lest the Aurors-- who, unlike the average wizard civilian, who cowered in fear and stood back, useless-- were on site and could rush in and apprehend them. Things were always done in the dead dark of night, the traditional place for the Dark Arts. During the day, a few of our number conservatively advocated the pureblood family; at night, the same members killed those who did not comply for it. The Dark Mark was found hovering over a different place nearly every single night, sometimes accompanied by a Mudblood's, halfblood's, or even a Muggle's body.

Barty and I, still in the ivory tower of Hogwarts and itching to get out, had to sit by quietly as most of this went on. Yet we were given one of the hardest tasks just before our exams of 6th year.

"The Dark Mark in Hogwarts," Lucius Malfoy, given the task of relaying the plot, told me, "would be a sure sign that the movement has taken over everywhere. There is no need to kill-- you two would be caught, anyway, by illegal-curse tracking wizards-- but just the sign, in a prominent place. We're going to shake that old fool, Dumbledore."

So at midnight, Barty and I snuck down. We had a brief spat over who would keep and watch and who would perform it, and I won. "I'm more powerful; I got an O in Charms and you only got an A. Back off."

"This isn't Charms, idiot," Barty had snapped. Yet he obliged and stood just outside.

I stood in the center of the floor, gazing up at the ceiling, which was depicting a cool, clear, night. The stars were bright and had vivid clarity. Regulus was not out yet, at least not within the sphere the Great Hall depicted, but Bellatrix was there, and-- I noted with a sigh-- the Andromeda constellation and Sirius, both of which were always there.

"Morsmordre!" I said clearly, my voice echoing off the halls. A ghost of green, a vision of skull and snake, rose up into the night to float, lingering somewhere around Orion.

"Psssst!" Barty hissed from the side of the hall. "Hurry up and get out of there!"

I ran, taking no heed to stem the clicking of my shoes. We dashed back upstairs. However, we were caught. Our Head of House found us out of bed and took the due course of action-- a simple detention to be served the following night-- but little did he realize how much he had incriminated us.

"Sixth year, and still sneaking about out of bed like firsties," he had scolded. Then he had smirked, "I would have thought you'd have gained more skill in your escapades than that." Everyone knew everyone was out of bed nearly all of the time; it was only a matter of who got caught.

Barty and I had played along, at first feeling pleased and lucky that a curfew breach was the most trouble we had gotten into.

When the school rose the next morning and entered for breakfast to find the ominous symbol lingering overhead, there was an obvious panic. Some of the child had seen the Mark floating above their neighbors' houses-- or even their own-- and they brought to mind horrible memories of death and destruction. Families had been frightened into compliance, tortured, killed, ripped apart in all various meanings of the word.

"Who did this?" Dumbledore had thundered upon entrace, silencing everyone, from the most panic-stricken to the most giddy. The Heads of Houses were required to bring forward all parties caught out of bed that night.

We were led to the Headmaster's office. Just outside the door, around us stood only Hufflepuffs caught sneaking food in the kitchens and a party of mischeivous, pranking Gryffindors that rather reminded me of Sirius and his friends. There were no other Slytherins; we were not going to be put off the hook.

I remembered what Bella had said to me once, when I had suggested the idea of being caught, as I was led into the Headmaster's office. "Be proud, Regulus," she had said. "Be defiant. Admit what you did and shine with the glory of it all. Show them you are not ashamed. After all, you are not, are you?" She always carried herself that way; she always would. She was never ashamed of anything. Everything was always intended. If it wasn't, no one ever knew.

As Barty shivered beside me nervously, I stood straight-backed and proud. "Do you boys know anything of the occurrence in the Great Hall last night?" he asked us. "As you are the only Slytherins present, the circumstantial evidence stands against you.

I'm going to be martyred for the cause, I thought, just as Edgar Bones and his family was martyred for his.

"I did it," I said clearly. "Barty only helped me, sneaking down. It was me."

Barty stopped shaking and I think he was pleased he had let me do the Mark.

Dumbledore blinked, rather affronted, behind his half-moon spectacles. His clear blue eyes with their white swirls annoyed me.

"Well, Regulus," he sighed. "Mr. Crouch, I daresay you know who he is--" he turned with a funny half-smile to Barty, "-- has recently expressed concern of underground happenings within the school. He had just, as of last night, offerred to take disciplinary action on any and all students caught carrying allegiance to this terrorist group known as the Death Eaters. However, as you two did not know of this decree until this morning, after you performed the curse, I feel I will only apply the old rules. To speak truth, I do not approve of any censorship of this type. I want my students to be able to express whatever views they may hold, whether I agree with them or not."

My stomach tightened at this; if he was the leader of the Order, how could he not hold our Death Eater connections against us?

He went on, "Your parents will be contacted--" Barty made a squeaking noise in the back of his throat and Dumbledore gave him a sympathetic glance, "--I'm sorry, but it's rule under both the new and old codes-- and you will serve detentions. I can only hope that you will consider your standpoints, and how you choose to express them. Any act of violence will be dealt with much more severely."

The afternoon was a long one. Dumbledore owled our parents, and we sat, waiting, out of classes, until they arrived. My parents, having no work to inhibit them, arrived first. I was brought in with them.

Mummy's eyes scanned over me in a sort of shock, as if she was unsure how to react. Father, however, accosted Dumbledore immediately.

"What is it you're trying to get my son expelled for?" he demanded. "The incident was all over the bloody newspapers this morning. Everyone's appalled and convinced my son's some sort of terrorist."

Dumbledore adjusted his glasses. "The Dark Mark is associated with a certain group known to be involved in terrorist undertakings. They have performed murders, tortures, and countless acts against the law. However, I have a strong belief that within their ideals lies some of the more conservative types that act only on words and actions, not violence. By performing the Dark Mark in our school, in our public setting, Regulus, I believe, was only depicting his support and belief in what the Death Eaters deem their cause: pure blood, family, and blood loyalty-- all redeeming qualities and none too volatile to be considering dangerous. He performed no murders or destruction of property, and is therefore not culpable under the higher law. This is no proof that Regulus even belongs the organization; he may only be showing his support. And I am not expelling him."

My father blinked, "So you're saying there's nothing wrong? Merlin, man, what was the reason for calling me down here, then?"

"I want you to consider what your son is doing. You still have charge over him; he is not yet of age. As you saw in the papers, he could be labelled something much darker than he is. That could create prejudice in the reverse order."

At this moment, Barty's father dashed in, as red as a tomato in the face. "Where's Bartemius?" he shouted. "Where's--" he saw me and he drew in a great shuddering breath and pointed his finger accusingly at me, "YOU!"

Mr. Crouch turned to Dumbledore, shaking with rage. "Dumbledore, you saw my decree published late last night. I demand custody of this boy. He demonstrated the symbol of the Death Eaters and is therefore considered one of their number until trial. If he is of age-- is he of age?" he scanned me over, a hungry look in his eyes, "-- if he is of age, he can be locked in Azkaban pending decision of trial."

"He is not of age, Bartemius," said Dumbledore mildly. "He was also unaware of your decree at the time of his crime, and I am not taking that action."

"Well, just because he didn't know about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist!" Mr. Crouch snapped. "I know half the kids in this school have no idea about the Underage Wizardry Restriction-- they don't read that ruddy note you send home-- and yet they'll still be punished for it if they break it!"

"I don't want censorship in my school," Dumbledore said, his eyes growing suddenly steely. "And, Bartemius, I am putting the decision of punishment in the parents' hands. Instead of taking charge of the Black child, perhaps you would do well to look to your own."

Mr. Crouch blanched, and then turned out without a word.

"I'm sorry," said Dumbledore. "Now, that is all. Regulus, all I can do is caution you to be more careful about how you go about stating your political opinions. For the scandal you caused, you and Barty will both receive two weeks' detention. It's the least I can do to assuage those students who have been victims to the more radical undertakings of the Death Eaters."

He let us out. However, Mummy and Father did not leave right away.

"That Crouch! Scum! Bloodtraitor! Utter officious slimeball, looking to receive gains from the permissive Muggle-borns to rectify his dying line!" Mummy stormed. Then she gently swiped my cheek with her hand. "Accusing my Regulus of murder and torture."

Father scoffed. "What possessed you to do that, boy?" he snapped coldly, a foil to pitying Mummy.

I felt my stomach fall slightly and my heart pick up. His tone did not feel promising; it brought to mind memories of sore, painful sensations all along my skin.

"Regulus has always long been interested in politics," Mummy defended. "And his take quite matches your own. I should think you should be proud."

"Hmph. Of course he agrees with me; he's no bloodtraitor like your Sirius." Father sniffed. Mummy narrowed her eyes at the suggestion of the term "your." "But the problem is he's being too open and too radical," his cold eyes fell back on me. "Associating yourself with that group is going to lead to nothing but trouble, Regulus. Of course we agree with them, but they go about it entirely too violently. Change ought to be slow, for balance."

I swallowed hard. "But I'm already in it," I choked out. "Bellatrix had me join years ago. I thought-- I thought you knew. I thought you would have known by now."

Mummy folded her arms and looked to Father. "I told you I thought he would take the route of movement," she said in an I-told-you-so fashion. "He's young. Young people are idealistic like that. And look-- it's Regulus. The most he does is write essays and blast the Dark Mark once into the air. There are some realists in that group."

"Bella's violent," said Father shortly. "She could be out there doing the murders. I would not put it past her."

"Very well, she might," Mummy sighed. "But she's not Regulus. Regulus was the one caught, and Regulus is the one we have charge of. And if Regulus wants to become more radical like his cousin when the time comes, when he is of age in August, he may very well do so."

"He shan't stay in our house if he does. I won't have people thinking I'm a terrorist."

Mummy pushed him with one hand. "He will too stay in the house. He's the heir, and a right bloody better one than that abomination was."

"If you hadn't been so quick to disown him, we could have brought him back to--"

"We could not have!" she snapped. "He RAN AWAY. He was not going to come back-- and if he did, he would have put up a fuss and ruined us all."

I started backing away, fearful of a fight. So Mummy and Father were still fighting about Sirius. Father saw me, and whipped out his wand, pointing it right under my chin.

"All I'm saying, Regulus, is you'd better be careful what actions you take. I will not have our family disgraced as radicals, captured and locked up in Azkaban, when I don't advocate it. I of course am very pleased you have taken an interest in politics and the future of our society which seems to have gone to the dogs, but I want you to keep a cool head about it." He shook his wand threateningly and I cringed, worried a curse for good measure might come out of the end of it. However, none did. The two left, and I was unscathed.

It was a beautiful feeling. Dumbledore could do nothing to me, and he knew it. With my parents on my side, he was stuck. With the pureblood families, the Slytherin families, he needed the parents' backing or else the child would never learn. Detentions with disembowling frogs or scrubbing bedpans were nothing compared to standing under the wand of one's father. That absent in the background, Dumbledore held no power at all. It was something unavoidable, too. Gryffindors could feel remorse for their actions when they saw the piteous faces of their victims, Ravenclaws could be explained the errors of their ways by a trusted authority, and Hufflepuffs could be swayed by the simple approval or disapproval of their peers and loved ones, but Slytherins required brute treatment for discipline. We felt no pity or remorse naturally; we glorified our negative achievements. The only way to stop us was through physical gratification or punishment. Hence, within the old pureblood families, strict punishment of the sort was the rule in child-rearing. That, of course, was not allowed in the schools; Hogwarts had little affect in reshaping Slytherin students.

It was very lucky Father disagreed with Crouch-- and that Dumbledore let him. Barty, however, was not so lucky.

He came back to the dorms after his meeting with Dumbledore and his father looking extremely pale and nervous.

"He never gives a damn about me, ever," he said bitterly, "yet now suddenly he goes crazy because he thinks I'm going to ruin him. When I just sat nicely in the background while he carried on, being the good son, he didn't say more than a word to me on any given day. Now, when I'm undermining his own cause, being suspected of Dark behaviors, he goes berserk, and screams at me about how I'd better shape up and I was bringing shame on the entire family, and I swear, one minute longer in there and he would have hexed me badly, in front of Dumbledore and everything."

"I'm sorry," I said. "My dad agreed with me on everything-- except he said be careful about being too radical."

Barty shook his head, shocked and jealous of my opposite treatment. "He said you were a bad influence. He got mad at me all again for being Sorted into Slytherin, for feeding into their ways, and making friends with the wrong sort of people. He said he long suspected your entire family of being in the root of all of these problems-- and he's ruddy well right-- but he doesn't realize that I'm supporting all of them, too. He doesn't let me have my own damn opinions."

"My parents dictate mine," I whispered, "too, but at least I agree with theirs, naturally."

I wanted to tell Barty to break away from his family, his father, just as Sirius had done with his family, but that would be breaking one of the strongest rules of our cult: loyalty to family-- the first thing I had ever attempted to break and was severely punished for. With Father finally agreeing with me on all counts, there was never going to be a chance I would break any more of his rules.


	12. Purification

_I do not own Harry Potter._

_Thanks again to reviewers! Cam, True, and TRF Chan, I love you!_

_This chapter MAY be bordering R . . . just a warning. This is the worst it gets, though._

No doubt only incensed further by his father's reaction-- the Slytherin spite-- Barty became more intent on the cause. The summer before senior year I spent lightly, consorting with possible matches at parties held at my home. I worked on the occasional essay, feeling scholarly and rational, as Father had hoped. Bellatrix kept in touch, informing me of the Death Eaters' every movement. I could not escape to the meetings until late August, after my 17th birthday, when I learned to Apparate. The Dark Lord understood. Barty, however, had become of age in May, and attended, gloating to me. He, unlike Bellatrix, did not keep so much in touch. I had him over a few times, but our relationship was no longer like that of two teenage boys. We were starting to get old, ready to take our places in society. It was inevitable, according the Barty's father, that he would have to work, and so the weight of a possible job kept resting on Barty's shoulders. His father cared nothing-- or very little-- for encouraging relations with women, either, and I doubted Barty had gotten over Bellatrix yet. That was the nature of his obsession. I, however, could dabble with all the eligible Slytherin girls I wanted, knowing that one would end up with me regardless.

"Do you want any excitement?" Bellatrix asked me at one of her visits. "The Dark Lord feels are you becoming too complacent. He spoke to me at the last meeting. He fears you are losing your passion."

"I am taking the conservative route," I said. "I've written anonymously to the papers, and--"

"Conservative! There is no change without action, Regulus!" she had exploded. "You know this! Your father sits on his backside all day, wallowing in what he has, not caring that it is about to be taken away! He has no thought, no care, about the future of this society!" She had paused, taking in a deep, calculating breath and an idea. "You need some time out," she said. "You need some action."

My birthday, in August under the Regulus constellation, was greatly celebrated. The Black heir was of age. There was a grand party, though it was the most intense I had ever witnessed.

Instead of a majority of females as was common at my courting parties, there were equal numbers, some married inlaws, others simply friends, all with as much access to the ladies as I had. Rabastan Lestrange was still unmarried, and he had ladies flocking to him all night. There was alcohol, and not in the discreet quantities usual at dinner parties. I began to grow appalled by what occurred by glutton of this.

"Regulish . . . " a plump girl with blond ringlets clutched my arm and smiled, forcing her eyes into mine but drawing in her face closer than she probably had intended. "You're sheventeen now. All grown up! So . . . birthday boy . . . you wanna . . . " she faded off into a laugh.

I raised my eyebrows at her. "My parents are here, you realize," I excused myself.

She laughed louder, ending with a snort, which caused her to stop abruptly, cover her nose, and promptly begin giggling again. I pitied her; she clearly did not realize how ridiculous she appeared. "Your house is big, Regulish . . . all our houses are big . . . that's why they're big . . . you have a private bedroom, right?" She swayed a little with her alcohol.

Rabastan came up, drink in hand, and put his arm around the waist of the girl, who jumped and giggled again. He took a swig and then bent down, unabashed, and kissed her.

"Rabastan!" I hissed.

He looked up at me, an odd half-smile plastered on his face. "Don't be so uptight, Regulus. It's your bloody 17th birthday. Grow up a little, come on."

I glared at him. "I don't think you should be indulging in such low behavior. It's my party, after all. This isn't the way our society acts."

"Then you obvioushly haven't been around our shocshiety," the girl sniggered.

I bit my lip. Surely not everyone was covertly corrupted underneath the pure front. I had known about Narcissa-- that was forgiven because she was in grief-- and perhaps Bellatrix had done a couple things, and a few of those bad girls Narcissa talked about-- but not everyone! I certainly didn't, for one thing. I didn't want my family ashamed of me, so I had never done anything to bring shame upon them. Was every other person in the room harboring secrets, locked-up shames? Were they all partaking in the behaviors I knew the Muggle-borns and bloodtraitors were, premarital relationships?

Rabastan scanned over my panic-stricken face and sighed. He put his hand on my shoulder, removing it from the waist of the girl. "Regulus, come on. It's embarrassing you're so damn innocent. Surely you didn't think everybody in Slytherin was pristine?"

"We try to come off that way, don't we?" I snapped. "Arranged marriages, separate girls and boys, all our conservative courting rituals--"

"Yeah, and after the party, we sneak off and do what we want. Everyone knows it; we just don't shout it to the world."

"Well, have we always done it? I believe our cause, Rabastan, is to preserve purity. Also to preserve our sacred way of life-- which includes a more tasteful way of doing things," I sniffed. Mummy had always said that. Formalities were what made character, she said. She had also spent the first seventeen years of my life shooting covert hexes at me across the floors of parties and gatherings to remind me of the proper behavior when I forgot-- and she always knew. In fact, I was half-expecting her to hit my rear with a diluted striking hex or something in the like for even looking as if I was preparing to do something.

Rabastan smirked. "Correction, Regulus. Our cause is to purify wizard blood. We're stamping out the Muggle-borns, and that's it. There's nothing in there about having to be perfect, pristine little angels."

"We're trying to build a perfect society, aren't we?" I retorted.

Rabastan rolled his eyes, but he stiffened when Rodolphus came up behind him and put his hand on his shoulder. "Regulus has higher ideals than you, Rabastan," he said, making clear his eavesdropping. "The Dark Lord is pleased with this desire for perfection."

Rabastan glowered at him, resentful of this correction in front of his very drunk lady friend. "The Dark Lord has never suggested anything of the sort."

Rodolphus raised his eyesbrows and Rabastan turned away, leading the girl by the waist over to get more drinks. I wonder if she would be passed out by the time the night was over.

Rodolphus spoke to me more rationally. "You're allowed to have fun, Regulus. Concentrate on the task at hand. There's no need to deny yourself . . . pleasure . . . because you've been taught it's wrong. There are certain things we as humans cannot do." He smirked. "And don't worry. Not a single girl you will end up marrying will have a problem with it. They will have it done themselves."

"Permissive Muggle-born dominated society, decline of civilization," I muttered automatically.

Rodolphus laughed. "So sorry to disillusion you." Then he shook his head, "To think you're the brother of notorious lady's man Sirius Black. Or Bellatrix, for that matter," he added fairly, half-smiling. "I suppose you've been following your Mum's orders all along? Scared by what happened to Sirius, no doubt?" He patted my shoulder. "You're a good kid. But you don't need to be perfect-- and certainly don't expect everyone else to be that way, either. You're confusing purity of the members of society with purity of the society itself. We're only working for the former."

After he went off to continue socializing, I tried enjoying myself. I flirted more voraciously than I ever had before. I felt the tingling sensation in my lower regions-- one I had previously associated only with erotic dreams-- when one of the girls pressed up close to me when we danced. Rodolphus had been right; every girl I danced with was perfectly willing to go as far as I wanted to take her-- or at least the minimal distance I was comfortable with. WhenI kissed someone-- a gorgeous girl with thick, dark hair, fair skin, and astoundingly red lips, over in a corner enclosed by old wooden shelves, where she allowed me to fervently press her into the wall as her lips travelled passionately over mine, suprising me with the biggest thrill I had ever felt-- Mummy saw and gave me a stern look, cold with raised eyebrows, but she did not cease us nor even give me a warning. I had only blushed and turned back to my business, pleased with what I could argue was her permission.

By the end of the party, thanks to Kreacher's endless service of alcohol, nearly everyone had allowed the previous formalities to fade away. If I had not been told by Rodolphus previously at the party, I would have been appalled, searching for the hex that had been put on our guests to make them behave so badly. Barty and Rabastan both had disappeared with girls I myself had had a turn with, and Bellatrix and Rodolphus-- still bearing some semblance of pure lifestyle-- danced with each other, but in such a wild fashion I thought for sure it could be mistaken for something quite worse. Even Mummy loosened up; she started screaming recklessly for Kreacher to bring out the cake, though it had long been eaten, and kissed the elf passionately when it arrived with a hastily-made substitute.

Only two members of the congregation remained out of the stupor. Father went into his office, rubbing his temples at the noise that apparently evoked a headache, and remained there indefinitely. There was also a girl, whom I had seen dance with no one, who sat pensively alone, occasionally rising to look out the window. I felt guilty for a moment, abandoning what I took as a fellow purist. She was alone in this party of moral decay and uncivilization.

I pointed her out to Rabastan, the nearest person to me, and we approached her, myself trying to hide my now unsteady, drunk condition. My voice still came out louder than I intended, though I tried to be polite. "Are you having a good time?" I asked.

She met me with cold eyes, what was taught to Slytherin girls as the polite way to respond to gentlemen, lest they be too forward. She had obviously not drunken anything.

"No; I can't quite say I enjoy the company."

That felt like a slap. I only spluttered for a moment, but Rabastan tried to play it off. "My dear, this is all the company you will ever have in your lifetime. This is your society; from these men will you pick your future husband. What else do you have?"

She raised one of her eyebrows-- something I had never been able to do. "This is not all there is. You're forgetting all the other children of all the other Houses-- and a world full of Muggles," she added impertinently.

I bit my lip. "Is it our behavior? Is it as appalling as that?" I wished I hadn't given in. "I'm sorry; usually I don't--"

Yet she cut me off with a laugh. "Oh, goodness, this doesn't bother me. I've had fun like this before-- worse than this," she grinned devilishly. "I just choose to have my fun with other people."

Rabastan's face stiffened, expressionless. I spoke warily, "Like who?"

She grinned, still boastful and impertinent. "Ravenclaw boys are so much better kissers than Slytherins. You're too rough and possessive, you know. And Hufflepuffs are so much better to the girls they associate with. And," she tipped her head back and sighed, "Gryffindor boys really know how to . . . " she faded off, moaning slightly with the memory. I thought for sure she was bluffing, teasing us, trying to get a rise out of us. My face grew hot.

"And Muggles," she said, her eyes lighting up and meeting ours, "you wouldn't believe they don't know how to do magic. Because it sure feels like--"

Rabastan suddenly had her pressed by the throat to the window behind her. Her eyes opened wide and she started choking.

"You don't joke about that, you little whore!" he hissed, glaring deeply at her."You better say it isn't true. You better say you haven't screwed with Muggles!"

She kicked out at him, her legs the only part of her body able to move. Her blows landed feebly on Rabastan's shins. "Jealous, are you?" she choked out, her voice painfully raspy.

Rabastan pulled her back and pressed her against the glass again. "You little whore! Bloodtraitor, Mudblood-screwing, Muggle-screwing whore!"

I stood behind him, feeling myself paling. The girl's face was turning a sickly shade of blue-purple, and she kept hacking, trying rasp out a cry.

Suddenly, without warning, Rabastan pulled her to the ground, flattening her against the carpet. People began to notice-- I felt my companion Death Eaters rush past me on either side; Barty, Rodolphus, Evan . . .

I cut myself off from what was happening, my eyes averted, my ears striving to block out the noise. The party was still going on in a drunken stupor, no one was taking any aversion to the scuffle going on behind the bureau. Yet I, unlike them, could not block out the screams and the tearing of clothing.

In my mind flashed a horrible memory, linked with the shredding of fabric.

"You don't like this? You don't mind filthy Mudbloods doing it to you, though, do you?" came the echo in my head. It had been Mummy's voice, one of the most violent I had ever heard her.

Andromeda had done the same thing. The girl was Andromeda, a pureblood girl in the wrong house who loved the wrong boy. She deserved it, for corrupting what was her most sacred with what was most dirty. Yet . . . Andromeda had been a nice girl. She had been smart, sensitive, sweet, and romantic.

I took in a great, shuddering breath. It was so much easier when the bad blood was just purged. Minds were so much harder to remedy. It would be easier to kill the corrupted minds, too, but we did not have the people to sacrifice. We were a dying race. Yet this "correction" of a pureblooded girl, a bloodtraitor, pure of blood but not in mind, disgusted me. It was brutal, even more brutal than death and torture. Those were cleansing, simple, basic, animal. This was somehow so much more emotional, so much worse.

I didn't want to be in this circle anymore-- not for this. I wasn't meant for this type of cleansing. This seemed darker, somehow-- and though I advocated the dark, this wasn't the pure fight I had always wanted. Death was easy; death was clean. This was shameful. It made me sick.

I turned quickly out the door and went straight to my room, turning onto the stairs just down the corridor, forgetting the guests and the party. Only Bellatrix, unconcerned with the happenings in the corner, saw me go. She undid my lock as soon as I did it and stepped into the room, long green dress robes swishing over her feet.

"What's wrong, Regulus?"

I had already sat down on the bed. I looked up at her sadly, with a sigh, and explained as delicately as I could what had happened, and told her my thoughts that it might have been better to simply have killed her. I told her how I had been enchanted and then disenchanted with sex and romance, all in one night.

She had only laughed. "Take it from a woman, Regulus; there are fates worse than death."

"Andromeda chose her fate over death."

"Andromeda was of corrupted mind and had no honor," she snapped. "And she is living with her punishment."

"Do you think . . . do you think Andromeda . . . was . . . ?"

"Raped?" her words were blunt and casual. "I have no idea. I haven't talked to her in years. Do you think I bothered to ask her?" her gaze was sharp. I averted my eyes apologetically, and she sighed. "That's become the punishment for pureblood girls who allow themselves to stoop to the level of Mudbloods and Muggles. The theory is it's a correction. By having a proper pureblood do it to you, you'll learn the proper way."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "I don't think that's how it's going to work--"

Bellatrix rolled her eyes. "Of course. It's just so you men can get out your excessive urges. At any rate, it shames a girl with any pride at all to the point of no return. Funny, how they can be low enough to give themselves to Muggles, but they get all embarrassed by this."

I could not think of anything to say to that. I looked at my feet, and the patterns on the carpet beneath them, where I used to play on the floor when I was little, Sirius, Andromeda, Bellatrix, Narcissa, and I-- all together. We had played with simple childish toys, the kind everyone had, Muggles and wizards alike. We had our childish spats, but we had always made up. We fell in and out of favor with our parents, but we always bounced back. Yet now two of us were already gone.

Purity. It was such a common word, such a common goal, and yet no one had mastered it completely. Pure blood, pure mind, pure behavior. Had I mastered all three?

Seeping up in the back of my mind came a memory. It was not so violent as Andromeda's. "You don't have to obey everything they say, you know? You have to have some conscience of your own, too."

I looked up at the door. Bellatrix had lost interest in me and gone out through it; it swung open on its own as it had always done. It was there I had stood when Sirius had told me that. The words were still as clear as if it were yesterday.

I had helped corrupt our line. Father had known it all along and tried to stop it, but I had done it anyway. I had broken the Black line, and nothing had been the same ever since.


	13. Dissension

_I do not own Harry Potter._

Seventh year began with a rapid pace. Due to our incident last year, neither Barty nor I was even considered for Head Boy. It was given to a Muggle-born Ravenclaw boy whom we both knew from Herbology.

"The most honorable post of one's schooldays desecrated by impure filth," I wrote to the Daily Prophet. I was put in the editorial section by the fruits of Lucius Malfoy's blackmail. "Clearly our wizard society is becoming weakened, allowing such backgroundless scum to take the helm, the leadership positions in our community. If it starts now, in school, at Hogwarts, it will surely start-- and has started-- in the positions of higher authority. Rue the day that we shall have a Muggle-born Minister of Magic."

None of the teachers could do anything about my opinions. The Head Boy, however, avoided me, and refused to give me detentions even when I deserved them for fear of confrontation. It was a very easy year.

Barty continued his vigilante acts of terror. He was bored, he said, with the simplicity of school life; he wanted out, where he could murder and plunder and torture. I had laughed at him, but he pointed out how much Bellatrix valued action. I too wanted out; I felt too young, once again, all of my cousins out of school. I had not seen Sirius in a year, and Andromeda in two.

One day, I was shocked to come back from NEWT History of Magic-- during which Barty had a free period-- to find, in our very dormitory room, a girl tied to a chair dragged in from the common room.

The girl could only have been in about third year. She had strawberry blond hair that was tousled with her struggle. She was thin, but her face was round and smooth, the type that would have dimpled should she have chosen to smile. She was a cute little girl, and terrified. Yet I knew there had to be something wrong with her, something despicable. There was an air of newness, innocence, misunderstanding about her, as if she did not yet quite feel she fit in here. Also, after all, Barty was incrimating her.

"Impure whelp," Barty had snapped. "She was saying something to some of her friends about how she's a pureblood and disagrees with the Dark Lord. That if one pureblood can, everyone shoud. Little Hufflepuff's been playing off she's pure; she's got a pure surname, Vance, but she's been hiding the other side of her story, hasn't she?"

He snarled at her, forcing his wand at the girl's temple. "Tell him, are you a pureblood?"

She flinched and whimpered. "My dad's a wizard! He's pure!" she insisted.

"But your mum?"

The girl kicked her heels against the chair. Her head fell back away from the wand, but Barty forced it back into the side of her face. "Well?" he continued to demand.

"She's a Muggle-born!" she wailed. "I'm a half-blood!"

"And your grandparents are Muggles?" Barty pressed on, nearly foaming at the mouth. It was a refined form of torture, this interrogation.

"Yes, but I've never met them," the girl sniffed, tears running down her round, young face. "I've been raised wizard. And I don't agree with You-Know-Who, and my dad said I ought to be proud to stand up and say I'm a pure witch who's got morals!"

"Vance is a foul bloodtraitor name, anyway. Is it your mum who's in the Order? We know there's a Vance in the Order."

"My . . . sister," she choked.

"Well, she's down to be killed. You ought to know. Maybe you can try to save her and go down with her, and end the half-blooded Vance line forever. It turned worthless once it got your foul Mum in it. Your father had to be a sick-minded Muggle-lover, too, to--"

"She was a witch!" the girl cried. "My mum was a witch! She was just born to Muggle parents!"

"Muggle-borns are as good as Muggles. They don't know anything. They don't understand anything and they don't fit in. They're dirty," he pressed in further his wand; the skin was pulling around it and I could tell there was going to be a bruise on her face.

"I thought I was considered pure!" she moaned. "How many . . . how many steps does it take to get away from Muggles?" she breathed.

"Three, by law," I said automatically. "Five for good measure. Yet if you don't have the surname, you don't have the bloodline."

The girl's eyes fixed on me, noticing me for the first time. The blue irises swirled piteously; her eyes reminded me a bit of Dumbledore's. "But didn't even the purest bloodlines start out as a fluke at some point?"

"How dare you!" Barty snapped, raising his left hand and cuffing her across the side of her face. She gasped raggedly and began whimpering again.

Yet I thought about it, turning it over in my rational mind. Of course, my first reaction had been to shout and lash out at her, but Father's teachings stemmed my temper and passion. She spoke the truth; what had been a fluke had only extended itself into a line. One day, even the Muggle-borns lines would be considered fully pure. It was an odd sort of paradox.

It was so much easier just to deny it.

Before I could add in my two cents, however, Barty tapped the bindings holding the girl in and shook her free, seizing her bodily around the shoulders.

"What do you reckon, Regulus? What fate does this scheming little Mudblood spy deserve?"

"I'm not a Mudblood!" she shrieked.

"Let her off," I said coldly. What did he want us to do? We couldn't very well kill her. She wasn't pureblood, so Barty had no excuse to rape her. "She's little."

Barty's face screwed up, confused. "Doesn't make her pure. Damn, Regulus, she's got dirty blood."

Half of my mind was still stuck on the contemplation of this paradox of pure blood. It was taking over. It stopped my concentration, this disillusionment, doubt, thought that possibly I might have been wrong all along. She had not had a choice, after all. I pitied her less than bloodtraitors, and, yet, bloodtraitors were what they were by choice. She had had no say.

Barty stared at me. "Regulus . . . " he said, trying to break my trance of thought. "Regulus, what's going on?"

The girl's eyes were still on me, piteously, pleading, begging, submitting to the fact that she was in my hands.

The thoughts brewing made me feel as if I held some sort of justice in my hands. "Let her go," I said again. "The Dark Lord will never know."

Then I felt the pain.

The spot on my arm where I knew to be the Dark Mark had erupted in pain so much different and more intense than the subtle warning used to call us to the Dark Lord's side. I cried out with the shock of it, seeing nothing but the blue of the girl's eyes and feeling nothing but pain, pain pain.

It grew more intense, growing, building, spreading, surging outward from the point of origin, all over my body. I screamed, so loudly that I felt as if I would cough up my very lungs, my entire soul, even. I wanted to die, never feel again, just as long as I would never have to feel this . . .

I felt myself hit the floor-- or, rather, felt the upset of my overbalance the effects of gravity take its toll, for there was little sensation within my body aside from the sheer pain. It was ten million times worse than the simple skin-burning charm Father had used on me, but it had the same effect.

"Please!" I screamed. "Please, stop! I'm sorry, master! I'm sorry! I shall not again!"

The Mark still burned.

I forced my eyes open again and could see the girl's eyes. She deserved this, not me. She was the dirty-blooded one, the impure one, the desecration, sacrilege, abomination, shame of the wizard flesh. I raised my wand, unsure of how I was even able to force my limbs to move, and shouted:

"CRUCIO!!!"

Instantly, she screamed. Her eyes popped, but I kept staring into them. Her skin was pulled taught as her mouth flew open to scream out her very soul. As the pain poured into her, I felt it slowly washing away from me, ebbing to my victim through my wand. You deserve this, I thought. You deserve this more than me!

Then pain stopped. There was nothing left. I let my wand fall, and the girl was silenced. There was a wash of quiet over me suddenly; I lied on my back on the floor, my chest heaving up and down, cold sweat broken out all over my skin.

I saw Barty, standing off away from me, staring at me as if I were a leper. The girl was passed out, her head lolling against her shoulder in the chair.

"Merlin, Regulus . . . that must have been bad, for him to actually do that do you himself," Barty whispered.

It was true; our orders were given to us through Bellatrix or Lucius, never the Dark Lord himself. We were not high enough up yet. I had only assumed punishments would be done in the same way. It frightened me very badly that he had been able to see that.

"And that was just a warning," I gasped, stroking my burning skin upon my now-faded Dark Mark. The point still stung.

"You shouldn't have said he wouldn't know. Of course he knows," Barty shuddered. "He knows everything."


	14. Destruction

_I do not own Harry Potter._

The other students in my History of Magic class-- none being Slytherin-- regarded me as a sort a fanatic, unaware that I was at the calmer side of the pool. I pointed out bits of propaganda in our text, things subtly placed by Dumbledore-like types, underhandedly planting opinions in a certain direction by the description of historical events. The Wizard-Muggle clashes of the Middle Ages were regarded as "excessively brutal"-- when I knew, as my ancestors led them-- and various periods of time in which the Ministers were pro-pure were considered "tyrants" and "dictators"-- one of which was my own Vega Black. I, of course, took it upon myself to rectify this by proclaiming my views very loudly to the very small class. Professor Binns, being dead, felt no reason to stop me.

Father, still in his habit of reading every Daily Prophet cover to cover, found my editorials and often chided me to be careful and less radical. Bellatrix, on the other hand, sent me letters encouraging more action. "You say you prefer straight cold death to torture or humiliation," she wrote. She had twisted my words slightly, but I acquiesced. "Perhaps it is time you took the action you seek. You have never felt the true power of holding a single life in your hands. You have never killed. Perhaps it is time."

I was given my first lethal mission only as a result of a very controversial move by the Dark Lord.

"Death Eaters; we have our first spy for the Order. Meet newly converted Order member Peter Pettigrew."

The cloaked figure before us stepped aside, cape swishing, to reveal a fat, badly-shaved, balding man with a beer gut and a very sleazy grin-- yet he was unmistakable as the friend Sirius had brought to our house, the fat, sniggering boy who had set doxies on me.

"He has given us information on the locations of several of the most protected Order members. Our first order of business shall be the Prewetts. Twin brothers Gideon and Fabian were notorious Aurors. They had killed the first of our number, Wilkes, just a month ago. However, he was our first; of the Order, their number was diminished by at least a third. "We shall have revenge for our dearly departed Wilkes, have no fear," the Dark Lord laughed.

There was a murmur of assent from our number. Yet, when out of reach of his hearing, away from the circle and unmasked, feeling so much safer out of the actual meeting-- though I was still wary-- I told my fears to Bellatrix.

"I don't trust him," I said shortly.

"Of course you don't trust him. I don't trust him, either. I don't trust anyone," she rolled her eyes. "Slytherins don't trust people."

Yet that wasn't true. I had trusted everyone else I had ever met.

The mission was assigned to Bellatrix, Evan Rosier, Jugson, Antonin Dolohov, and myself. I was surprised that I was to be working with such powerful companions, when I was usually lower down on the scale. Apparently Bellatrix had worked her wiles; her dear baby cousin needed a chance to show his skills.

Antonin Dolohov, yet another recruit from Transylvania, was particularly fond of Bellatrix. He kissed her hand and told her to leave the dirty killing to the men. She gave him a venomous, warding smile, and said, "You're right, Antonin. I'll keep with the torture. Unless of course you need my help," she raised her eyebrows, challenging him. It was as if she wasn't even married.

Barty certainly had something to say about it. "I'm older than him, and I haven't gotten a chance to murder yet!" he whined.

"This is supposed to be dangerous," I told him. "The Prewetts are more protected than the average civilian. You'll get to do one of those. The Order's bound to show up at this. Can you imagine what would happen if YOU were caught? Your dad would KILL you."

Barty narrowed his eyes. "Not if I got there first."

I sighed, "Then kill him in his sleep and get it over with." Then I Apparated away.

The squadron of five of us arrived outside the residence of the Prewetts', which was more protected than the Bones', though the two of them were young and single, living only together. We separated again, moving in from different angles. Five against two was bound to be enough, but we couldn't be sure how many more would arrive to help. The Order was beginning to get the hang of communications.

I crept in through yet another window, hiding my tracks again. It was becoming easier and easier to do. This time, I was going to prove myself entirely to the Dark Lord. I had written advocatively and proclaimed publicly my views. I had fought and tortured. Now, I was going to kill.

The fight was already beginning when I came into the nearest bedroom. I did not know if this was Gideon or Fabian, but Antonin had him cornered, blocking hexes and throwing them back at him at lightning speed. I had to hand it to the Prewett brothers; they were well-trained.

I heard a shout behind me, and the other brother, just as tall, with the same red hair, came charging in. I ducked out of the way; Bellatrix and Evan were following him. Bellatrix had the strangest look about her-- it was a glow, a fanatical gleam that lit up her eyes and sent a terrible smile across her face. She reeked of energy, and I heard her laugh with a violent passion I had only known echoes of in the days she used to fight with Sirius. It was both moving and terrible.

She hit the second brother in the back with the Cruciatus, laughing as the pain went into him. She was that powerful. The man lied screaming on the floor for several minutes until my cousin relented. I felt my breath stop in my chest for a moment, but then recovered, remembering my duty. There were two men to be dealt with.

As Antonin and Jugson duelled the first brother together, Evan did just as Antonin had promised Bella. As the brother lay on the ground, he leapt towards him, wand raised, knocking me aside against a bureau as if I wasn't even there, and shot out a hex.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!!!" he roared. There was the light, and Bellatrix's laughter, and the fervent panting of the other three, still duelling.

As they all died away, the first brother saw. "NO!!! GIDDY!!!"

He shot out a violent hex that sent Jugson sprawling, and came charging right past Antonin to his brother's side. He took one look down at his fallen brother, then looked up, eyes terrible and intense, raised his wand, and started to speak the words that he had been given the right to as an Auror.

His wand was pointed at Bellatrix.

"AVA--"

"AVADA KEDAVRA!!!" I shrieked, finishing first, leaping into his path and pointing my wand right at his face. He wasn't going to kill Bellatrix. She was my cousin, my family . . . I would die before she did.

I felt suddenly a great weight as if on the end of my wand. The first brother-- Fabian, I took it-- opened his grey eyes into mine, stunned. For a split second that seemed to go on forever, I held that weight-- his very life-- feeling as if it were going to pull me down. Killing took so much strength-- but he had to die. He had to die, or me, Bellatrix, all of us.

He fell forward in a green flash. I collapsed to my knees, sweating and shaking. Bellatrix shrieked with laughter from behind me, unfazed.

We were done-- but then suddenly . . .

"APPREHEND THEM!!!"

From all around us appeared a circle of wizards-- Alastor Moody, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Frank Longbottom, even James Potter-- and they charged. I saw Jugson yank his hood upward to hide himself-- it had fallen in the scuffle-- and begin to duel with Longbottom. Dolohov rushed straight to Shacklebolt.

"YOU'RE GOING DOWN FOR ONCE, BOYS!!!" Moody cried, taking on Evan. Evan pointed his wand straight at Moody's nose, tearing out a great hunk of it. Moody clapped his hand to his already-pockmarked face, where now there was flowing blood. "Shan't go down easily, eh?" Another curse erupted, this time from Moody's wand. Evan fell to the ground with a gasp. I did not see the green light, but when he lay beside Fabian, I knew he was in just the same condition.

My mask, too, had fallen, and I was too weak to pull it up. On my knees still, I saw Potter meet eyes with Bellatrix. He dashed for her, but she was too fast. I felt her cloak fly over me and one hand seize my shoulder, and then there was a pulling sensation as we Apparated.

We landed on the floor of my bedroom in 12 Grimmauld Place. Bellatrix pulled her cloak off of my head and fell back on the bed, laughing like a giddy-- and quite sadistic-- schoolgirl.

"Wasn't that beautiful, Regulus? You took him down, all by yourself! We did, of course, weaken him a little, but . . . " her intense eyes, still glowing with the strength to burn, bored into mine. "How did it feel?" she whispered almost sensually.

"I felt his life in my hands," I gasped. "Did Rosier go down, too?"

Bellatrix sighed, but shrugged. "Yes, but one for two isn't so bad-- these days. Yet if our weakest member," she grinned, which I took as apology, "can kill so easily . . . oh how we carry the advantage."

"What about Barty?" I asked.

"Bartemius is like Rodolphus and I," she said. "We enjoy pain. The pure, clear, terror of it. The screams, the contortions. Unnecessarily brutal, you might say. But it's my kick. Everyone is different. Mulciber, for instance, enjoys control. He likes the feel of holding one's will in his hands. You . . . you say you enjoyed holding the actual life?" I hadn't said I had enjoyed it, but she beamed, and I couldn't argue. "You like killing. That is the strongest power of all. I thought you would be weak, like Lucius, and only like talk, the weakest . . . but it turns out I was wrong. Congratulations, Regulus. You are one of the elite now."


	15. Disillusion

_I do not own Harry Potter._

_Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone that reviewed this all along the way: TRF-Chan, True, Cam, and DemonSan. You guys are fantastic. Unlisted thanks go out to anyone else who will ever review it, because gasp it is over! Also thanks to my little brother, who will never read this on the site but let me beta-read him a few chapters-- and then inadvertantly gave me a compliment (and an insult) by saying he didn't know I wrote it.

* * *

_

I graduated from Hogwarts that June, a hardened Death Eater. I looked around at my classmates, and no one besides Barty had done anything near as important as me. Sure, the Head Boy and Head Girl were honored most, followed by the prefects and Quidditch captains and Most Valuable Players of the Year and even the top class rankers. Yet those things had only shaped Hogwarts. Barty and I, decent at grades but never on top due to other time constraints, in trouble for blasting the Dark Mark into the Great Hall, were ignored. We received our diplomas, and that was it.

Mummy couldn't have been prouder. She had not come to Sirius's graduation, of course. The first Black son of this generation to graduate, at the same time the last of the children. Narcissa came with her new husband, Lucius, but Bellatrix did not.

"There are things more important to attend to," was all she had said. I read about it in the papers the next day, but I still couldn't help being disappointed. Another family, another terror, another death. It was so much more important than my graduation, but when standing up before all those people, I certainly didn't feel that way. I felt left out and unimportant.

I did not feel that way for long.

At the next Death Eater meeting, I was called up personally to the Dark Lord's side. Shocked, I approached him, trembling. I barely heard the words for the power of his voice as he spoke to the crowd.

"Death Eaters, a Prophecy has been made . . . a Prophecy about me.

"There is a rival to be born, born to enemies who have defied me three times. He shall be born at the end of next month, and we have little time. For Dumbledore knows of this; the Prophecy was to him, and my source has only provided me with limited information."

He stepped aside, sweeping his cloak to reveal Avery, cowering in the fetal positon, shaking in recovery from what must have been a severe Cruciatus.

"Yet we know what actions he has taken already to protect those that might apply. Two members of our opposition, two couples, both members of each in the Order," his breath grew heavy with the word, "are with child. Children due at the end of July. Both couples have defied me . . . three times.

"They shall not defy me a fourth.

"One couple has taken no action, yet. The second, however, is rumored--" he turned slowly and motioned to Peter Pettigrew, who stood, grinning a proud, smarmy grin, "-- to be preparing for a Fidelius Charm to hide themselves from me. We must ensure that the secret is divulged to us . . . by making our very own Pettigrew the Secret-Keeper himself."

"What couple is this?" Bellatrix burst out in high, breathy tones.

The Dark Lord held up a thin, white hand to silence her. Only she was permitted to speak out of turn without punishment; he favored her. "Why, Pettigrew's very idol of his schoolboy days, the unmatchable James Potter, and his wife . . . a filthy Mudblood, no less."

"Surely no child born of such could match you, my Lord?" Bella cried.

"Silence, Bella," he insisted, a little more impatiently. "It is as has been Prophecized. Now . . . Pettigrew informs me that there are only three wizards in the entire world with which Potter would entrust such a powerful secret . . . Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and himself. All we must do is ensure the others are unfit to serve, making Pettigrew the only option left.

"Black!"

I shuddered with the sound of his voice, right into my vulnerable neck as I bowed to him.

"Yes, my lord?"

"Both you and Bella are related to Sirius Black."

"Were . . . " I heard Bellatrix whisper sharply in offense.

"And though your ties have been broken over the years, the blood remains," he insisted. "The blood remains enough that you may approach him without suspicion. You, Regulus . . . for you are closest to him, and youngest, and least suspicious . . . you shall seek him out, gain access to him, close range to him . . . and then, you shall kill him."

The words struck me hard in the pit of my stomach. I had killed before, yet this was so unexpected.

I heard Bellatrix suck in a gasp of breath. I tried not to stammer, for I had already hesitated. "Yes, my lord."

Bellatrix accompanied me on the mission, leading me to the apartment complex in which Sirius lived. I had never seen the building before, but I could tell by the vehicles parked outside-- one of which was Sirius's signature flying motorbike, most likely the only non-Muggle artifact-- that it was integrated with Muggles. It was clear, too, from the patched paint and concrete that it was not of the highest standard.

"You will go in alone," she told me as we approached the main entrance, a steel door with a window, within which we could see a Muggle electrical light fixture hanging from the ceiling. "I only came to ensure you are safe. Death Eater though you may be, I wouldn't want you to walk among these parts alone. Besides," she sniffed. "I have too long dissociated with the boy. He knows all too well what I stand for. It would be suspicious. I vowed never to speak to him again. He would know. You--" she smiled down at me, the fanatical gleam in her eyes absent in exchange for a rare tenderness she reserved only for me, "--however, have not broken off with him, officially. Your mother has disavowed him, your father has disowned him . . . but you, Regulus . . . you are still," she smirked, "his family."

My heart thudded hard against my chest as I swallowed. Was it not suspicious to her that I had not disavowed him? It was in pure ignorance, of course, and yet . . . why did I not cast him off now? For the mission? Yet I knew perhaps even free I could not.

"You'd better go in now," she said, pushing me forward. "I'll . . . " she gave a distasteful glance around, "wait."

I entered within, my footsteps echoing on the bare concrete. In my black cloak-- not the Death Eater attire, but black nonetheless-- I felt very out of place. I gripped my wand, hoping no Muggles would come out of their dirty apartments. None did.

I knocked on the door to that which I had been told was Sirius's; Peter knew the number, and there it was, in tarnished gold letters nestled in the white paint.

He opened it.

His eyebrows furrowed and I could hear loud music thumping from within-- but my heart thumped louder.

"Regulus?"

His voice sounded as if it were underwater.

I stared up into his eyes, the same brown eyes as mine, reflecting back into me. I hadn't seen them in years, but they were still the same chocolate-brown. His hair was still untidy and rather long, and he still wore the same mischeivous smirk. He was still Sirius.

He was still my brother.

Everything I had ever wanted to be, he once was, and I had taken it away from him. He had been the heir, I only second, and I had seen to it to kick him out. He had been Bellatrix's closest companion, I only the crybaby follower, and now she found me kindred in soul and mind. He had once been loyal to his family-- he had tried to help me, save me, and I would not listen, though I preached loyalty more than he ever had. I had forced his loyalty away by lack of mine shown to him. He had once been Mummy's favorite . . .

It hit me: I wasn't going to be able to kill him.

What was it I stood for? The cause was the preservation of family and Dark culture. Yet here I stood, face to face with my own blood, ordered to kill him for his degeneration. Sirius still had my blood and I owed him my loyalty. I had been told so all throughout my youth; Father had even punished me for trying otherwise. Yet now, by showing loyalty to my family, the very thing I sought to protect, I would be disobeying an even greater order.

What had this pureblood cause become? In my youth, it had become so idealized that it was too perfect to be possible. In fact, what I had wanted to be myself was too perfect to be. The Death Eaters got things wrong and sometimes lost. People within our society did not always believe in it.

I was disillusioned, drowned in my own thoughts against the grain and the realization that some of what I had always deemed true was entirely false.

"You don't have to obey everything they say, you know? You have to have some conscience of your own, too."

I had a conscience.

My master said purity was in blood and mind. Sirius possessed the blood but not the mind . . . and it seemed I had finally lost one myself.

My wand fell away from Sirius's face. His face scrunched up and he spoke words, but I did not hear. I turned away, the air around me thick like water, no sound in my ears except the pounding of my pure blood in my ears and the palpatation of my slow-drumming heart.

I came face to face with Bellatrix just outside. It took her a moment to read the meaning in my face, but she knew. Of course she knew. I expected her to show no pity. The cause was greater to her than blood; she valued purity of mind over purity of blood. She had never been tormented by the loss of the heir or her sister, as her lost father had said. She would not value my loss, either.

"You didn't do it," she spat in a harsh whisper, when she gained words. "You failed. You spared that piece of scum, that bloodtraitor! What is wrong with you? He's not worth it! He never has been! It means nothing that he was once your brother! That's-- " her eyes widened. "That's why, isn't it?"

She was silent for a moment. The tenderness within her gaze, the soft, wet glaze . . . it was changing, transforming rapidly into a hardened hurt . . . and a maddening glow.

"Ohhh, you're weak, Regulus," she whispered. Her voice was so soft it was almost expressionless. "Weak. A weak traitor. A snivelling, pretensive, conniving traitor. A traitor even more repulsive than the one you just spared." She swallowed hard and blinked. When her eyes opened, there was not even a trace of kindness left. "You disappoint."

She sucked in a deep breath and her dark lids came down further over her eyes. "Won't your mother be proud to know her favorite son died a traitor?"

I did not speak, standing soldier-straight before my cousin, just as I had at the beginning, back when she used to frown on my weak, crybaby ways, back when Sirius was the superior one, back when I wanted to please everyone and failed, back before I was Mummy's favorite.

Now I had become all I had ever wanted-- and all I wanted was to go back.

The wand came down, pointing straight between my eyes. Her eyelids lowered even further. Her eyes narrowed in on me, concentrating, taking aim-- and no pity or mercy.

"Avada Kedavra!"

I wasn't always Mummy's favorite.

FIN


End file.
